17,812 research outputs found
From Temporal Models to Property-Based Testing
This paper presents a framework to apply property-based testing (PBT) on top
of temporal formal models. The aim of this work is to help software engineers
to understand temporal models that are presented formally and to make use of
the advantages of formal methods: the core time-based constructs of a formal
method are schematically translated to the BeSpaceD extension of the Scala
programming language. This allows us to have an executable Scala code that
corresponds to the formal model, as well as to perform PBT of the models
functionality. To model temporal properties of the systems, in the current work
we focus on two formal languages, TLA+ and FocusST.Comment: Preprint. Accepted to the 12th International Conference on Evaluation
of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2017). Final version
published by SCITEPRESS, http://www.scitepress.or
Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems
The modelling, analysis, and visualisation 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 solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative
abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical
geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that
next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific
perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and
Cognitive Science.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer
interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics;
computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling;
ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance
systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964);
Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental
Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press
STEPS - an approach for human mobility modeling
In this paper we introduce Spatio-TEmporal Parametric Stepping (STEPS) - a simple parametric mobility model which can cover a large spectrum of human mobility patterns. STEPS makes abstraction of spatio-temporal preferences in human mobility by using a power law to rule the nodes movement. Nodes in STEPS have preferential attachment to favorite locations where they spend most of their time. Via simulations, we show that STEPS is able, not only to express the peer to peer properties such as inter-ontact/contact time and to reflect accurately realistic routing performance, but also to express the structural properties of the underlying interaction graph such as small-world phenomenon. Moreover, STEPS is easy to implement, exible to configure and also theoretically tractable
Group Analysis of Self-organizing Maps based on Functional MRI using Restricted Frechet Means
Studies of functional MRI data are increasingly concerned with the estimation
of differences in spatio-temporal networks across groups of subjects or
experimental conditions. Unsupervised clustering and independent component
analysis (ICA) have been used to identify such spatio-temporal networks. While
these approaches have been useful for estimating these networks at the
subject-level, comparisons over groups or experimental conditions require
further methodological development. In this paper, we tackle this problem by
showing how self-organizing maps (SOMs) can be compared within a Frechean
inferential framework. Here, we summarize the mean SOM in each group as a
Frechet mean with respect to a metric on the space of SOMs. We consider the use
of different metrics, and introduce two extensions of the classical sum of
minimum distance (SMD) between two SOMs, which take into account the
spatio-temporal pattern of the fMRI data. The validity of these methods is
illustrated on synthetic data. Through these simulations, we show that the
three metrics of interest behave as expected, in the sense that the ones
capturing temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal aspects of the SOMs are more
likely to reach significance under simulated scenarios characterized by
temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal differences, respectively. In addition, a
re-analysis of a classical experiment on visually-triggered emotions
demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology. In this study, the
multivariate functional patterns typical of the subjects exposed to pleasant
and unpleasant stimuli are found to be more similar than the ones of the
subjects exposed to emotionally neutral stimuli. Taken together, these results
indicate that our proposed methods can cast new light on existing data by
adopting a global analytical perspective on functional MRI paradigms.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Neuroimag
Model-based testing for space-time interaction using point processes: An application to psychiatric hospital admissions in an urban area
Spatio-temporal interaction is inherent to cases of infectious diseases and
occurrences of earthquakes, whereas the spread of other events, such as cancer
or crime, is less evident. Statistical significance tests of space-time
clustering usually assess the correlation between the spatial and temporal
(transformed) distances of the events. Although appealing through simplicity,
these classical tests do not adjust for the underlying population nor can they
account for a distance decay of interaction. We propose to use the framework of
an endemic-epidemic point process model to jointly estimate a background event
rate explained by seasonal and areal characteristics, as well as a superposed
epidemic component representing the hypothesis of interest. We illustrate this
new model-based test for space-time interaction by analysing psychiatric
inpatient admissions in Zurich, Switzerland (2007-2012). Several socio-economic
factors were found to be associated with the admission rate, but there was no
evidence of general clustering of the cases.Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures and 5 tables; methods are implemented in
the R package surveillance (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=surveillance
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