Interpreting Spatial Language in Image Captions

The map as a tool for accessing data has become very popular in recent years, but a lot of data do not have the necessary spatial meta-data to allow for that. Some data such as photographs however have spatial information in their captions and if this could be extracted, then they could be made available via map-based interfaces. Towards this goal, we introduce a model and spatio-linguistic reasoner for interpreting the spatial information in image captions that is based upon quantitative data about spatial language use acquired directly from people. Spatial language is inherently vague, and both the model and reasoner have been designed to incorporate this vagueness at the quantitative level and not only qualitatively

Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science

A collection of papers presented at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, July 1994, including the following papers: ** Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Barry Smith ** The Bounds of Axiomatisation, Graham White ** Rethinking Boundaries, Wojciech Zelaniec ** Sheaf Mereology and Space Cognition, Jean Petitot ** A Mereotopological Definition of 'Point', Carola Eschenbach ** Discreteness, Finiteness, and the Structure of Topological Spaces, Christopher Habel ** Mass Reference and the Geometry of Solids, Almerindo E. Ojeda ** Defining a 'Doughnut' Made Difficult, N .M. Gotts ** A Theory of Spatial Regions with Indeterminate Boundaries, A.G. Cohn and N.M. Gotts ** Mereotopological Construction of Time from Events, Fabio Pianesi and Achille C. Varzi ** Computational Mereology: A Study of Part-of Relations for Multi-media Indexing, Wlodek Zadrozny and Michelle Ki

Qualitative Spatial Reasoning with Holed Regions

The intricacies of real-world and constructed spatial entities call for versatile spatial data types to model complex spatial objects, often characterized by the presence of holes. To date, however, relations of simple, hole-free regions have been the prevailing approaches for spatial qualitative reasoning. Even though such relations may be applied to holed regions, they do not take into consideration the consequences of the existence of the holes, limiting the ability to query and compare more complex spatial configurations. To overcome such limitations, this thesis develops a formal framework for spatial reasoning with topological relations over two-dimensional holed regions, called the Holed Regions Model (HRM), and a similarity evaluation method for comparing relations featuring a multi-holed region, called the Frequency Distribution Method (FDM). The HRM comprises a set of 23 relations between a hole-free and a single-holed region, a set of 152 relations between two single-holed regions, as well as the composition inferences enabled from both sets of relations. The inference results reveal that the fine-grained topological relations over holed regions provide more refined composition results in over 50% of the cases when compared with the results of hole-free regions relations. The HRM also accommodates the relations between a hole-free region and a multi-holed region. Each such relation is called a multi-element relation, as it can be deconstructed into a number of elements—relations between a hole-free and a singleholed region—that is equal to the number of holes, regarding each hole as if it were the only one. FDM facilitates the similarity assessment among multi-element relations. The similarity is evaluated by comparing the frequency summaries of the single-holed region relations. The multi-holed regions of the relations under comparison may differ in the number of holes. In order to assess the similarity of such relations, one multi-holed region is considered as the result of dropping from or adding holes to the other region. Therefore, the effect that two concurrent changes have on the similarity of the relations is evaluated. The first is the change in the topological relation between the regions, and the second is the change in a region’s topology brought upon by elimination or addition of holes. The results from the similarity evaluations examined in this thesis show that the topological placement of the holes in relation to the hole-free region influences relation similarity as much as the relation between the hole-free region and the host of the holes. When the relations under comparison have fewer characteristics in common, the placement of the holes is the determining factor for the similarity rankings among relations. The distilled and more correct composition and similarity evaluation results enabled by the relations over holed regions indicate that spatial reasoning over such regions differs from the prevailing reasoning over hole-free regions. Insights from such results are expected to contribute to the design of future geographic information systems that more adequately process complex spatial phenomena, and are better equipped for advanced database query answering

Qualitative Spatial Reasoning with Holed Regions

The intricacies of real-world and constructed spatial entities call for versatile spatial data types to model complex spatial objects, often characterized by the presence of holes. To date, however, relations of simple, hole-free regions have been the prevailing approaches for spatial qualitative reasoning. Even though such relations may be applied to holed regions, they do not take into consideration the consequences of the existence of the holes, limiting the ability to query and compare more complex spatial configurations. To overcome such limitations, this thesis develops a formal framework for spatial reasoning with topological relations over two-dimensional holed regions, called the Holed Regions Model (HRM), and a similarity evaluation method for comparing relations featuring a multi-holed region, called the Frequency Distribution Method (FDM). The HRM comprises a set of 23 relations between a hole-free and a single-holed region, a set of 152 relations between two single-holed regions, as well as the composition inferences enabled from both sets of relations. The inference results reveal that the fine-grained topological relations over holed regions provide more refined composition results in over 50% of the cases when compared with the results of hole-free regions relations. The HRM also accommodates the relations between a hole-free region and a multi-holed region. Each such relation is called a multi-element relation, as it can be deconstructed into a number of elements—relations between a hole-free and a singleholed region—that is equal to the number of holes, regarding each hole as if it were the only one. FDM facilitates the similarity assessment among multi-element relations. The similarity is evaluated by comparing the frequency summaries of the single-holed region relations. The multi-holed regions of the relations under comparison may differ in the number of holes. In order to assess the similarity of such relations, one multi-holed region is considered as the result of dropping from or adding holes to the other region. Therefore, the effect that two concurrent changes have on the similarity of the relations is evaluated. The first is the change in the topological relation between the regions, and the second is the change in a region’s topology brought upon by elimination or addition of holes. The results from the similarity evaluations examined in this thesis show that the topological placement of the holes in relation to the hole-free region influences relation similarity as much as the relation between the hole-free region and the host of the holes. When the relations under comparison have fewer characteristics in common, the placement of the holes is the determining factor for the similarity rankings among relations. The distilled and more correct composition and similarity evaluation results enabled by the relations over holed regions indicate that spatial reasoning over such regions differs from the prevailing reasoning over hole-free regions. Insights from such results are expected to contribute to the design of future geographic information systems that more adequately process complex spatial phenomena, and are better equipped for advanced database query answering

Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference GISRUK 2010

This volume holds the papers from the 18th annual GIS Research UK (GISRUK). This year the conference, hosted at University College London (UCL), from Wednesday 14 to Friday 16 April 2010. The conference covered the areas of core geographic information science research as well as applications domains such as crime and health and technological developments in LBS and the geoweb. UCL’s research mission as a global university is based around a series of Grand Challenges that affect us all, and these were accommodated in GISRUK 2010. The overarching theme this year was “Global Challenges”, with specific focus on the following themes: * Crime and Place * Environmental Change * Intelligent Transport * Public Health and Epidemiology * Simulation and Modelling * London as a global city * The geoweb and neo-geography * Open GIS and Volunteered Geographic Information * Human-Computer Interaction and GIS Traditionally, GISRUK has provided a platform for early career researchers as well as those with a significant track record of achievement in the area. As such, the conference provides a welcome blend of innovative thinking and mature reflection. GISRUK is the premier academic GIS conference in the UK and we are keen to maintain its outstanding record of achievement in developing GIS in the UK and beyond

Evaluating Field Crisping Methods for Representing Spatial Prepositions

There is a need for GIR systems to interpret the vague aspects of spatial language. Here we describe an initial approach towards evaluating crisp realisations of a field-based model of the use of the spatial preposition "near", based on evidence of usage of the term in image captions