Some computational aspects of geoinformatics

Mike Worboys, NCGIA, University of Maine, USA

 

Much of the early technology for spatial data handling (e.g. spatial

indices, object-oriented spatial data models) is now well understood.

Some current preoccupations of computer scientists working with geospatial

data will be the subject of these lectures. Topics will include spatial

reasoning, uncertainty , qualitative spatial data handling, multi-contextual spatial data models and spatio-temporal information systems.

Class schedule

Thursday April 3           10-12 [ overview.ppt ] [ notes.pdf ]

Friday April 4               10-12 [ GISoverview.pdf ] [ fusion.pdf ]

Monday April 7            9-10   14-17  (Modified!!!!)

Tuesday April 8            11-13 14-16

Wednesday April 9       11-13 14-16

Monday April 14          11-13 14-16

Schedule of presentations

Monday April 7

Mark, D., Toward a theoretical framework for geographic entity types, COSIT, 1993. [Luca Tesei]

Smith, B. and Varzi, A., Fiat and bona fide boundaries, Philosophy and Phenom. Research, 2000. [Luca Tesei]

 

Tuesday April 8           

Cohn, A. and Hazarika, S., Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning: An overview, Fund. Inf. 2001. [Antonio Gulli]

Guting, R.H., An introduction to spatial database systems, VLDB Journ., 1994. [Giovanni Conforti] .

 

Wednesday April 9

Randell, D., Cui, Z. and Cohn, A., A spatial logic based on regions and connection, 3rd Int. Conf. on KRR, 1992. [Giorgio Vecchiocattivi]

Goodchild, M. and Proctor, J., Scale in a digital geographic world, Geog. and Env. Modelling, 1997. [Salvatore Rinzivillo]

Pawlak, Z., Rough sets, IJ Comp Inf Sci, 1982. [Massimo Bartoletti]

 

           

Monday April 14         

Allen, J., Towards a general theory of action and time, AI, 1984. [Miriam Baglioni]

Allen, J., Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals, Comm. ACM, 1983. [Maurizio Atzori]
Guting et al., A foundation for representing and querying moving objects, ACM TODS, 2000. [Maurizio Atzori]

1. Introduction

Formal preliminaries: Set, function, relation, tolerance, equivalence relation, order relation, poset, lattice, Boolean algebra, semilattice, closure system, closure and interior operators.

 

2. Spatial ontologies, and cognition, integration

Representations of geographic entities and tasks. Human cognition of vagueness. Information integration.

 

Resources [ .zip ]

Mark, D., Toward a theoretical framework for geographic entity types, COSIT, 1993.

Smith, B. and Varzi, A., Fiat and bona fide boundaries, Philosophy and Phenom. Research, 2000.

Worboys, M. and Duckham, Commonsense notions of proximity and direction in environmental space, unpublished.

Worboys, M. and Duckham, M. Integrating spatio-thematic information. Second International Conference GIScience 2002, M. Egenhofer and D. Mark (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2478, Berlin: SpringerVerlag.

 

3. Formal models of space and spatial reasoning

Spatial reasoning and computational representation, Egenhofer's intersection method and the RCC calculus. Issues in discretization. Key issues in spatial databases.

 

Resources [ .zip ]

Cohn, A. and Hazarika, S., Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning: An overview, Fund. Inf. 2001.

Egenhofer, M. and Franzosa, R., Point-set topological relations, IJGIS, 1991.

Egenhofer, M. and Herring, J., Categorizing binary topological relations between regions, lines and points in geographic databases, Tech. Rep. Department of Surveying Engineering, University of Maine, Orono, ME., 1991.

Guting, R. and Schneider, M., Realms: A foundation for spatial data types in database systems, 3rd Int. Symp. on Large Spatial Databases, 14-35, Singapore, 1993.

Guting, R.H., An introduction to spatial database systems, VLDB Journ., 1994.

Randell, D., Cui, Z. and Cohn, A., A spatial logic based on regions and connection, 3rd Int. Conf. on KRR, 1992.

Smith, B., Topological foundations of cognitive science, workshop notes.

 

 

4. Imperfection and uncertainty in spatial representation and reasoning

Typology of uncertainty, scale, granularity and roughness, vagueness, fuzzy sets, rough sets defined by tolerances and equivalences.

 

Resources [ .zip ]

Cohn, A. and Gotts, N., A theory of spatial regions with indeterminate boundaries, 1994.

Goodchild, M. and Proctor, J., Scale in a digital geographic world, Geog. and Env. Modelling, 1997.

Jarvinen, J., Rough sets defined by tolerances, Rough Sets and Current Trends in Computing, 2000.

Pawlak, Z., Rough sets, IJ Comp Inf Sci, 1982.

Varzi, A., Vagueness in geography, Philosophy and Geography, 2002.

Zadeh, L. Fuzzy sets, Information and Control 1965.

 

5. Models of the dynamic world

Ontology of movement and change, ST architectures (e.g. TRIPOD), ST-ontology, event and process models as front ends to STIS, representation and reasoning issues.

 

Resources [ .zip ]

Allen, J., Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals, Comm. ACM, 1983.

Allen, J., Towards a general theory of action and time, AI, 1984.

Griffiths, T. et al., Tripod: A comprehensive system for the management of spatial and aspatial historical objects, ACM GIS Conf., 2001.

Guting et al., A foundation for representing and querying moving objects, ACM TODS, 2000.

Smith, B. SNAP/SPAN ontology. Unpublished notes.