Geospatial Narratives and Their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-Level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems

Abstract

The modeling, analysis and visualization of dynamic geospatial phenomenahas been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation GeographicInformation Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged paradigmatic extensions tocontemporary foundational GIS technology raises fundamental questions concerning theontological, formal representational and (analytical) computational methods that wouldunderlie their spatial information theoretic underpinnings. We present the conceptualoverview and architecture for the development of high-level semantic and qualitativeanalytical capabilities for dynamic geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in theareas of commonsense reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representationand reasoning, reasoning about actions and change and computational models of narrative,we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that accrue in the context offormal reasoning about space, events, actions and change. With this as a basis and withinthe backdrop of an illustrated scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urbannarratives, we address specific problems and solution techniques chiefly involving qualitativeabstraction, data integration and spatial consistency and practical geospatial abduction.