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International Conference on Spatial Information Theory

COSIT 1997: Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS pp 441–454Cite as

An event-based approach to spatial information

  • Representations of Spatial Concepts
  • Conference paper
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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1329))

Abstract

The notion of the location of an object at a moment of time is relatively straightforward, it is the region of space occupied by the object at that time. However, we are often concerned with the location of something over an extended period of time, as in Alice was in the room for ten minutes. Conceptualizing the location of an object in this case is much more difficult because changes of a spatial nature, i.e., changes in position, size or shape, can occur to any or all of the objects being related. Motion of course always involves changes in the location of at least one of the related objects. In this paper we propose an eventbased approach to the representation of spatial information in natural language. The essential idea is to treat spatial relations as event types. The utility of this proposal is illustrated through examples of representations of locative events, various types of motion events, spatial deixis and spatial anaphora. Finally, we show how the atemporal spatial axioms of Randell, Cui & Cohn (1992) can be translated into event-based axioms for time-aware spatial reasoning.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland Eastern Shore Mathematics & Computer Science, 21853, Princess Anne, MD

    Michael J. Almeida

Authors
  1. Michael J. Almeida
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Editor information

Stephen C. Hirtle Andrew U. Frank

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Almeida, M.J. (1997). An event-based approach to spatial information. In: Hirtle, S.C., Frank, A.U. (eds) Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS. COSIT 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1329. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63623-4_66

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63623-4_66

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63623-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69616-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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