Representing and visualizing interpersonal relationships and social life as geospatial data

Supporting and enhancing interpersonal connections and social life is a pressing issue in an increasingly digital world. Although interpersonal relationships are a key part of human spatial and social behavior, they remain a largely invisible part of maps and geographic information systems (GISystems). Prevailing methods of mapping demographic data do not sufficiently represent human behavior, and newer behavioral data (mobility, check-ins, tweets, etc.), are rarely used to represent personal ties in space.

To incorporate social relationship information into GISystems, we must first represent relationships as spatial data. Here, we list possibilities for representing the presence and magnitude of relationships and social life as spatial data using vector (point, line, polygon) and raster structures. We describe currently available data and potential uses. The goal of this work is to provide GIScientists with new methods to show the presence and vitality of relationships, social life and civic indicators, and how these indicators may correlate with features of geographic space. With this overview of representation options, GIScientists may see a clearer path to using relationship variables in spatial models, just as human behavioral and demographic features are used today.