When GIS meets neuroscience: sensing human emotions towards immersed places

Keywords: GIS, human emotion, place, EEG
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 3

Abstract

In recent decades, GIS scholars have been dedicated to developing geospatial technologies to comprehend the coupled human-environment system. Yet a geospatial sensing technique to quantitatively measure humans, especially the human emotions towards geographical environments, is still in its infancy. Under the guidance of Humanistic GIS, this study aims to provide a better understanding of human emotional responses to and subjective experiences of immersed paces on a much finer spatial and temporal granularity by inferring and georeferencing human emotions with the aid of GPS tracking, digital camera, and neural technology, Electroencephalography (EEG). A pilot study was implemented to demonstrate multiple components ranging from human subject selection, environmental data collection, human emotion recognition, georeference, and spatial-temporal analysis. Hopefully, this study will contribute to advancing GIS by incorporating EEG-based human emotion inference and analysis and considering human emotions, experiences, and interests in geographic studies.