COVID-19 and the Science of Where

Abstract

Geographic location plays a crucial role in many aspects of research about the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet measurement of geographic location is necessarily imperfect, providing one of many sources of uncertainty in geospatial analysis. The ecological fallacy and the modifiable areal unit problem may lead to false inferences from such analysis. Spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity are empirical properties of geospatial data that also impact inference and generalizability. Data provenance is a growing issue given the many ways in which data can be manipulated in preparation for analysis. The chapter ends with a discussion of critical spatial thinking as an umbrella term that encompasses all of these issues.