Open Source Software for Spatial Data Science

Abstract

Much progress has been made in the development of software tools for spatial analysis since the special issue of Geographical Analysis appeared in 2006, devoted to ``Recent advances in software for spatial analysis in the social sciences’’ (Rey and Anselin 2006). The 15 some years since the publication of the issue have been marked by major changes in the spatial analytical software landscape. Arguably, three important and somewhat related phenomena can be distinguished that drove these changes: the embedding of spatial analysis into spatial data science; the growing recognition of open science/open source principles in empirical work; and the increasing adoption of a literate programming perspective.