A great many of the studies made in the humanities and social sciences have a geographical component. It may be the development of communities along transportation systems -- New Orleans was positioned where it is because it was the meeting place between river bound traffic and ocean going vessels.
Much of the studies made in a wide variety of areas like tax income, crime rates, migration patterns, housing prices, school/medical/fire/police services produce geographically oriented data that can better be displayed on a map than any other way.
Modern Geographical Information Systems have come a long way from the very expensive software systems of years past that also required the use of very expensive workstations. Indeed much of the needed software is now abailable at no cost. One chapter in the book details the efforts of the author and others in finding or establishing web sites that point to software of particular interest to the social sciences. Further the extremely rapid development of very powerful personal computer systems has completely overtaken the expensive workstations of the past.
This book is the result of a six year study conducted by Dr. Okabe at the University of Tokyo.