GIS-Based Football Game Analysis – A Brief In- troduction to the Applied Data Base and a Guideline on How to Utilise It

The acquisition of a vast amount of spatial referenced data in professional association football cannot be disregarded any longer in the field of cartography and geo information science. GIS-appropriate data is being captured on a regular basis with sufficient accuracy. The project “GIS-based Football Game Analysis” can be regarded as a contribution and effort in order to share our spatial knowledge and accomplishments in GIS-technology within an interdisciplinary field. The objective of this article is to present the applied data base in as much detail as possible in order to draw our colleagues’ attention to this interesting data source which facilitates manifold GIS-based analysis opportunities. In this context, tracking and event data are described as well as classified from a geospatial analyst’s perspective. Furthermore, unconsidered parameters, which doubtlessly have a certain impact on the game, but cannot be taken into account, are reviewed. Moreover, our approach in the case of the GIS-appropriate data preparation and integration is provided as a guideline on how to utilise football-specific geo data.