This is where you develop and execute analytical pipelines to answer your research questions. These pipelines take the data from the data structure created in the Establishing the Data foundation phase and process them so they are ready for Dissemination and Communication It is thus a combination of the intellectual process of designing processing pipelines and a software-specific knowledge of how to implement these pipelines.
If the Geospatial Operations section provides the “ingredients” (like Buffer or Intersect), this section provides the complete recipes for common, reusable analyses.
This is where we practice our Abstract-First Design Pattern. The notes here don’t just show which buttons to click. They first define a tool-agnostic, abstract pipeline that represents the pure logic of the analysis.
The pipelines in this section (like digital hydrology digital hydrology or suitability modeling) are our ‘abstract’ building blocks. In the Application Domains section, we will see how these same pipelines are compiled and applied to solve concrete, real-world problems.
As you use this section, focus on understanding how a problem is deconstructed into a logical chain of operations. The goal is to build your own “design rationale”—the ability to explain why you chose a specific pipeline and how it logically connects your data to your scientific question.