Action spaces: a GIS based analysis. To assess the community action space of the Galapagos Island population using GIS based spatial-temporal pattern recognition techniques.

Abstract

One of the main problems the Galapagos Islands are facing are the changing mobility patterns of the population, from environmental friendly methods (foot, bicycle) to environmental unfriendly (taxi, car and bus). The travel distance per trip is also increasing due to the abilities of these new modalities which means that the population is becoming more and more mobile. The objective of the research is therefore to assess the GPS based definition of community action space by analyzing spatial-temporal patterns of the Galapagos Island population. This research uses the Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) and the Kernel Density Estimation to analyze the action space of 38 volunteers living in three different cities on the Galapagos Islands to assess the use of community action space for research on group mobility and movements within an urban environment. The results show that the methodology used in this research shows positive signs of being useful for the analysis of above mentioned problems, but that a more refined approach with more specific hypothesis is necessary for follow up research.