This book develops, for the first time, a qualitative model for the representation of spatial knowledge based only on locative relations between the objects involved. The core of this book is devoted to the study of qualitative inference methods that take into account the rich structure of space. These methods can be applied to quite a number of areas characterized by uncertain or incomplete knowledge, as for example geographic information systems, robot control, computer-aided architectural design, and natural language information systems.

This book contains twenty-eight papers by participants in the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on "Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space," held in Las Navas del Maxques, Spain, July 8-20, 1990. The NATO ASI marked a stage in a two-year research project at the U. S. National Center for Geographic Infonnation and Analysis (NCOIA). In 1987, the U. S. National Science Foundation issued a solicitation for proposals to establish the NCGIA-and one element of that solicitation was a call for research on a "fundamental theory of spatial relations". We felt that such a fundamental theory could be searched for in mathematics (geometry, topology) or in cognitive science, but that a simultaneous search in these two seemingly disparate research areas might produce novel results. Thus, as part of the NCGIA proposal from a consortium consisting of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Maine, we proposed that the second major Research Initiative (two year, multidisciplinary research project) of the NCOIA would address these issues, and would be called "Languages of Spatial Relations" The grant to establish the NCOIA was awarded to our consortium late in 1988.

Reinforcement learning has developed as a successful learning approach for domains that are not fully understood and that are too complex to be described in closed form. However, reinforcement learning does not scale well to large and continuous problems. Furthermore, acquired knowledge specific to the learned task, and transfer of knowledge to new tasks is crucial. In this book the author investigates whether deficiencies of reinforcement learning can be overcome by suitable abstraction methods. He discusses various forms of spatial abstraction, in particular qualitative abstraction, a form of representing knowledge that has been thoroughly investigated and successfully applied in spatial cognition research. With his approach, he exploits spatial structures and structural similarity to support the learning process by abstracting from less important features and stressing the essential ones. The author demonstrates his learning approach and the transferability of knowledge by having his system learn in a virtual robot simulation system and consequently transfer the acquired knowledge to a physical robot. The approach is influenced by findings from cognitive science. The book is suitable for researchers working in artificial intelligence, in particular knowledge representation, learning, spatial cognition, and robotics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 1997 International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT'97, held in Laurel Highlands, Pennsylvania, USA, in October 1997. The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from a total of 66 submissions. Also included are seven posters. The volume is divided into sections on representations of change, structuring of space, boundaries and gradations, topological models of space, formal models of space, cognitive aspects of spatial acquisition, novel use of spatial information, wayfinding and map interpretation, representations of spatial concepts, new approaches to spatial information.

The 5th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2001, took place at the Inn at Morro Bay, California, USA, September 19 23, 2001. COSIT grew out of a series of workshops/NATO Advanced Study Institutes/NSF Specialist Meetings during the 1990s concerned with theoretical and applied aspects of representing large scale space, particularly geographic or environmental space (this history is elaborated in the prefaces of previous COSIT proceedings). These are spaces in which (and on which) human action takes place, and which are represented and processed in digital geographic information systems. In these early meetings, the need for well founded theories of spatial information representation and processing was identified, particularly theories based on cognition and on computation. This concern for theory provided an early foundation for the newly emerging field of geographic information science. COSIT is not backed by any particular scientific society but is organized as an independent enterprise. The conference series was established in 1993 as an interdisciplinary biennial European conference on the representation and processing of large scale spatial information after a successful international conference on the topic had been organized by Andrew Frank et al. in Pisa in 1992 (frequently referred to as "COSIT 0"). After two successful European COSIT conferences with strong North American participation (COSIT ’93: Island of Elba, Italy; COSIT ’95: Semmering, Austria), COSIT ’97 moved across the pond to the United States, and was held in the Laurel Highlands, Pennsylvania.

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, Fourteen Volume Set embraces diversity by design and captures the ways in which humans share places and view differences based on gender, race, nationality, location and other factors—in other words, the things that make people and places different. Questions of, for example, politics, economics, race relations and migration are introduced and discussed through a geographical lens. This updated edition will assist readers in their research by providing factual information, historical perspectives, theoretical approaches, reviews of literature, and provocative topical discussions that will stimulate creative thinking. Presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage on the topic of human geography Contains extensive scope and depth of coverage Emphasizes how geographers interact with, understand and contribute to problem-solving in the contemporary world Places an emphasis on how geography is relevant in a social and interdisciplinary context

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on GeoSpatial Semantics, GeoS 2005, held in Mexico City, Mexico in November 2005. The 15 revised full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on theories for the semantics of geospatial information, formal representations for geospatial data, similarity comparison of spatial data sets, ontology-based spatial information retrieval, and geospatial semantic Web.

This volume collects the papers presented at the European Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT '93) held on the island of Elba, Italy, inSeptember 1993. Spatial information theory includes disciplinary topics and interdisciplinary issues dealing with the conceptualization and formalization of large-scale (geographic) space. It contributes towards a consistent theoretical basis for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Geographic information systems are widely used in administration,planning, and science in many different countries, and for a wide variety ofapplications. Research results which relevant for GIS are distributed between many disciplines and contacts between researchers have been limited. At the same time, the development of GIS has been hinderedby the lack of a sound theoretical base. This conference was intended to help remedies these problems.

With the aim of automatically reasoning with spatial aspects in a cognitive way, several qualitative models have been developed recently in the Qualitative Spatial Reasoning field. However, there is no model to reason with several spatial aspects in a uniform way. Moreover, most of these models simplify spatial objects to points. In this book we present a novel approach for integrating the qualitative concepts of orientation, distance, and cardinal directions, using points as well as extended objects as primitive of reasoning, based on Constraint Logic Programming. The resulting model has been applied to build a qualitative Navigation Simulator on the structured environment of the city of Castellon.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2005, held in Elliottville, NY, USA in September 2005. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on vagueness, uncertainty, and gradation; paths and routes; ontologies and semantics; ontologies and spatial relations; spatial reasoning: cognitive maps and spatial reasoning; time, change, and dynamics; landmarks and navigation; geographic information, and spatial behaviour.