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 phenomena has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational and (analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial information theoretic underpinnings. We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and reasoning, reasoning about actions and change and computational models of narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that accrue in the context of formal reasoning about space, events, actions and change. With this as a basis and within the backdrop of an illustrated scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address specific problems and solution techniques chiefly involving qualitative abstraction, data integration and spatial consistency and practical geospatial abduction.