This volume collects the papers presented at the first international conference dedicated to spatial and temporal reasoning in geographic space, entitled "GIS: from space to territory - theories and methods of spatio-temporal reasoning". Within the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA, one of the supporters of the conference) the importance of spatial and temporal reasoning was recognized several years ago. Initial research found that spatial reasoning in geographic or large-scale space is different from spatial reasoning in small-scale space, as usually dealt with in robotics and expertsystems. Temporal reasoning has attracted interest in the artificial intelligence community. The volume also includes two invited papers: "Do people understand spatial concepts: the case of first-order primtives" by R.G. Golledge, and "Temporal databases" by R.T. Snodgrass.

This volume collects the papers presented at the first international conference dedicated to spatial and temporal reasoning in geographic space, entitled "GIS: from space to territory - theories and methods of spatio-temporal reasoning". Within the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA, one of the supporters of the conference) the importance of spatial and temporal reasoning was recognized several years ago. Initial research found that spatial reasoning in geographic or large-scale space is different from spatial reasoning in small-scale space, as usually dealt with in robotics and expertsystems. Temporal reasoning has attracted interest in the artificial intelligence community. The volume also includes two invited papers: "Do people understand spatial concepts: the case of first-order primtives" by R.G. Golledge, and "Temporal databases" by R.T. Snodgrass.

"This volume collects the papers presented at the first international conference dedicated to spatial and temporal reasoning in geographic space, entitled "GIS: from space to territory - theories and methods of spatio-temporal reasoning". Within the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA, one of the supporters of the conference) the importance of spatial and temporal reasoning was recognized several years ago. Initial research found that spatial reasoning in geographic or large-scale space is different from spatial reasoning in small-scale space, as usually dealt with in robotics and expertsystems. Temporal reasoning has attracted interest in the artificial intelligence community. The volume also includes two invited papers: "Do people understand spatial concepts: the case of first-order primtives" by R.G. Golledge, and "Temporal databases" by R.T. Snodgrass."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

In an effort to further investigation into critical development facets of geographic information systems (GIS), this book explores the reasoning processes that apply to geographic space and time. As a result of an iniative sponsored by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), it treats the computational, cognitive and social science applications aspects of spatial and temporal reasoning in GIS. Essays were contributed by scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplines including: geography, cartography, surveying and engineering, computer science, mathematics and environmental and cognitive psychology.

Qualitative reasoning about space and time - a reasoning at the human level - promises to become a fundamental aspect of future systems that will accompany us in daily activity. The aim of Spatial and Temporal Reasoning is to give a picture of current research in this area focusing on both representational and computational issues. The picture emphasizes some major lines of development in this multifaceted, constantly growing area. The material in the book also shows some common ground and a novel combination of spatial and temporal aspects of qualitative reasoning. Part I presents the overall scene. The chapter by Laure Vieu is on the state of the art in spatial representation and reasoning, and that by Alfonso Gerevini gives a similar survey on research in temporal reasoning. The specific contributions to these areas are then grouped in the two main parts. In Part II, Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi examine the ontological status of spatial entities; Anthony Cohn, Brandon Bennett, John Gooday, and Nicholas Gotts present a detailed theory of reasoning with qualitative relations about regions; Andrew Frank discusses the spatial needs of geographical information systems; and Annette Herskovits focuses on the linguistic expression of spatial relations. In Part III, James Allen and George Ferguson describe an interval temporal logic for the representation of actions and events; Drew McDermott presents an efficient way of predicting the outcome of plan execution; and Erik Sandewall introduces a semantics based on transitions for assessing theories of action and change. In Part IV, Antony Galton's chapter stands clearly between the two areas of space and time and outlines the main coordinates of an integrated approach.

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 3001, held in Morro Bay, CA, USA in September 2001. The 30 revised full papers presented together with three full keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 70 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on geographical ontology and onthologies; qualitative spatio-temporal reasoning; formalizations of human spatial cognition; space, cognition, and information systems; human and machine approaches to navigation; language and space; and cognitive mapping.

Space and time are inextricably linked. Reasoning about space often involves reasoning about change in spatial configurations. Qualitative spatial information theory encompasses spatial as well as temporal representation and reasoning. Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representation and Reasoning: Trends and Future Directions is a contribution to the emerging discipline of qualitative spatial information theory within artificial intelligence. This collection of research covers both theory and application-centric research and provides a comprehensive perspective on the emerging area of qualitative spatio-temporal representation and reasoning. This revolutionary new field is increasingly becoming a core issue within mobile computing, GIS/spatial information systems, databases, computer vision as well as knowledge discovery and data mining.

Evolutionary models (e.g., genetic algorithms, artificial life), explored in other fields for the past two decades, are now emerging as an important new tool in GIS for a number of reasons. First, they are highly appropriate for modeling geographic phenomena. Secondly, geographical problems are often spatially separate (broken down into local or regional problems) and evolutionary algorithms can exploit this structure. Finally, the ability to store, manipulate, and visualize spatial data has increased to the point that space-time-attribute databases can be easily handled.