Journal of Spatial Analysis

Spatial analysis as the main approach of geography was reviewed and searched through its historical development. The results of this exploratory research showed that this approach was born after the Second World War due to the overall interest of geographers to develop universal theories and laws. The advocators of this field believed that the old regional geography was not able to develop a scientific and applied knowledge. The main motivation of the development of the spatial analysis was the quantitative revolution of the 1960’s which was triggered by the article published by Shaeffer in 1953. This was followed by some prominent geographers such as Bungeh, Ulman, Barry, Hagget, Chorley and others. Bungeh and Harvey strengthened the philosophical foundation of spatial analysis and others such as Hagget , Chorley and Hajestrand published important books in the field of quantitative geography. The main objective of spatial analysis is to analyze the distributions through the identification of their global and local structures and reasoning these structures by their spatial relationship with other distributions. In this regard it uses quantitative data and mathematical language to achieve the spatial theories and laws.

     The spatial analysis studies the spatial distributions and structures. These are the entities that are not subject to the human interpretation and thinking. This approach is true in the both physical and human geography. The knowledge it tries to achieve is the theories and laws about the spatial distributions. The methodology of spatial analysis is the quantitative methods such as experiment and survey. Thus in terms of ontology the entities of spatial analysis are independent of human mind and objective. The spatial characteristics of distributions are not constructed but discovered. The methodology used in spatial analysis is quantitative and objective including some methods such as experiment and survey. In 1980 and onward, human geography tried to move toward qualitative methods such hermeneutics but during 21^st century all branches of geography are using quantitative methods more frequently than qualitative ones; but the use of the combined version of quantitative and qualitative methods is becoming more frequent day by day.

  The introduction of Geographic Information System as the operational environment for spatial analysis works the approach has become more widespread and dominant. Geographers are now able to analyze more spatial data and discover more spatial theories to solve the spatial problems. GIS is the main tool for spatial analysis and by introducing the science of geostatistics has improved the scientific and applied power of spatial analysis. The application of quantitative geography including geostatistics and GIS requires improved knowledge of mathematics, geometry and statistics; the main language of today geography. The spatial analysis covers the important topics of geography including spatial distributions, regions, spatial relations especially the relation between human and environment, spatial structures, spatial reasoning, interpolation, and the most important topic of spatial planning. The spatial analysis is the only scientific field to define and develop spatial planning. With correct and logic spatial planning there won’t be any environmental hazards. Because in any region all human settlements and activities are planned according the potentials of the region.