The emergence and rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), represented by OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), has brought up new opportunities across various industries and disciplines. These cutting-edge technologies are transforming the way we interact with information, communicate, and solve complex problems. We conducted a pilot study exploring making maps with ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Specifically, we tested designing thematic maps using given or public geospatial data, as well as creating mental maps purely using textual descriptions of geographic space. We conclude that ChatGPT provides a useful alternative solution for mapping given its unique advantages, such as lowering the barrier to producing maps, boosting the efficiency of massive map production, and understanding geographical space with its spatial thinking capability. However, mapping with ChatGPT still has limitations at the current stage, such as its unequal benefits for different users and dependence on user intervention for quality control.

Massive and rapid testing is crucial for containing the spread of COVID-19. Health and policy planners must ensure that access to and uptake of SARS-CoV-2 testing is adequate and equitable. This study measures the spatial accessibility to testing sites in Florida at the census tract level at the end of May 2020, using the 2-step floating catchment area method that integrates both driving and walking modes. Accessibility scores were found to be heterogeneous across geographic regions and among different groups of people. In particular, many rural areas were in a testing desert. While people in larger cities tended to have better accessibility to testing, many did not have adequate accessibility at that time due to both capacity limitations and spatial factors. In particular, people without access to private vehicles and the elderly faced disadvantages in accessibility to testing sites even in urban areas. However, Black and low-income groups were disproportionally concentrated in neighbourhoods with above-average accessibility due to their closer proximity to testing sites. These results suggest that increased efforts are needed to reach vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those without private vehicles.

Spatial flow data represent meaningful interaction activities between pairs of corresponding locations, such as daily commuting, animal migration, and merchandise shipping. Despite recent advances in flow data analytics, there is a lack of literature on detecting bivariate or multivariate spatial flow patterns. In this paper we introduce a new spatial statistical method called Flow Cross K-function, which combines the Cross K-function that detects marked point patterns and the Flow K-function that detects univariate flow clustering patterns. Flow Cross K-function specifically assesses spatial dependence of two types of flow events, in other words, whether one type of flows is spatially associated with the other, and if so, whether this is according to a clustering or dispersion trend. Both a global version and a local version of Flow Cross K-function are developed. The former measures the overall bivariate flow patterns in the study area, while the latter can identify anomalies at local scales that may not follow the global trend. We test our method with carefully designed synthetic data that simulate the extreme situations. We exemplify the usefulness of this method with an empirical study that examines the distributions of taxi trip flows in New York City.

In late 2023, the image-reading capability added to a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) framework provided the opportunity to potentially revolutionize the way we view and understand geographic maps, the core component of cartography, geography, and spatial data science. In this study, we explore reading and analyzing maps with the latest version of GPT-4-vision-preview (GPT-4V), to fully evaluate its advantages and disadvantages in comparison with human eye-based visual inspections. We found that GPT-4V is able to properly retrieve information from various types of maps in different scales and spatiotemporal resolutions. GPT-4V can also perform basic map analysis, such as identifying visual changes before and after a natural disaster. It has the potential to replace human efforts by examining batches of maps, accurately extracting information from maps, and linking observed patterns with its pre-trained large dataset. However, it is encumbered by limitations such as diminished accuracy in visual content extraction and a lack of validation. This paper sets an example of effectively using GPT-4V for map reading and analytical tasks, which is a promising application for large multimodal models, large language models, and artificial intelligence.

Most of the shrinking cities experience an unbalanced deurbanization across different urban areas in cities. However, traditional ways of measuring urban shrinkage are focused on tracking population loss at the city level and are unable to capture the spatially heterogeneous shrinking patterns inside a city. Consequently, the spatial mechanism and patterns of urban shrinkage inside a city remain less understood, which is unhelpful for developing accommodation strategies for shrinkage. The smart city initiatives and practices have provided a rich pool of geospatial big data resources and technologies to tackle the complexity of urban systems. Given this context, we propose a new measure for the delineation of shrinking areas within cities by introducing a new concept of functional urban shrinkage, which aims to capture the mismatch between urban built-up areas and the areas where significantly intensive human activities take place. Taking advantage of a data fusion approach to integrating multi-source geospatial big data and survey data, a general analytical framework is developed to construct functional shrinkage measures. Specifically, Landsat-8 remote sensing images were used for extracting urban built-up areas by supervised neural network classifications and Geographic Information System tools, while cellular signaling data from China Unicom Inc. was used to depict human activity areas generated by spatial clustering methods. Combining geospatial big data with urban land-use functions obtained from land surveys and Points-Of-Interests data, the framework further enables the comparison between cities from dimensions characterized by indices of spatial and urban functional characteristics and the landscape fragmentation; thus, it has the capacity to facilitate an in-depth investigation of fundamental causes and internal mechanisms of urban shrinkage. With a case study of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megaregion using data from various sources collected for the year of 2018, we demonstrate the validity of this approach and its potential generalizability for other spatial contexts in facilitating timely and better-informed planning decision support.