Generating approximate region boundaries from heterogeneous spatial information: an evolutionary approach

Spatial information takes different forms in different applications, ranging from accurate coordinates in geographic information systems to the qualitative abstractions that are used in artificial intelligence and spatial cognition. As a result, existing spatial information processing techniques tend to be tailored towards one type of spatial information, and cannot readily be extended to cope with the heterogeneity of spatial information that often arises in practice. In applications such as geographic information retrieval, on the other hand, approximate boundaries of spatial regions need to be constructed, using whatever spatial information that can be obtained. Motivated by this observation, we propose a novel methodology for generating spatial scenarios that are compatible with available knowledge. By suitably discretizing space, this task is translated to a combinatorial optimization problem, which is solved using a hybridization of two well-known meta-heuristics: genetic algorithms and ant colony optimization. What results is a flexible method that can cope with both quantitative and qualitative information, and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of specific applications. Experiments with geographic data demonstrate the potential of the approach

Investigating behavioural and computational approaches for defining imprecise regions

People often communicate with reference to informally agreedplaces, such as “the city centre”. However, views of the spatial extent of such areas may vary, resulting in imprecise regions. We compare perceptions of Sheffield’s City Centre from a street survey to extents derived from various web-based sources. Such automated approaches have advantages of speed, cost and repeatability. We show that footprints from web sources are often in concordance with models derived from more labour-intensive methods. Notable exceptions however were found with sources advertising or selling residential property. Agreement between sources was measured by aggregating them to identify locations of consensus

Sandbox geography : how to structure space in formal models

ftp://ftp.geoinfo.tuwien.ac.at/twaroch/PhD_Twaroch.pdfDie vorliegende Dissertation ist durch empirische Studien zur Raumkognition von Kindern motiviert. Ausgangspunkt ist die Theorie Theorie der kognitiven Entwicklung. Die Theorie Theorie besagt, dass Kinder wie Wissenschaftler Theorien über die sie umgebende Umwelt bilden. Die Theorien entstehen durch Beobachtung der Umwelt und dienen der Prädiktion von Phäanomenen. Immer wenn Prädiktion und Beobachtung nicht in Übereinstimmung gebracht werden können, wird ein Theoriewechsel ausgelöst.Der Beitrag dieser Dissertation ist eine formale Beschreibung naiv räumlicher Theorien in Anlehnung an die Theorie Theorie. Neu ist die Beschreibung eines Revisionsmechanismus von einer Theorie zur folgenden.Ein formales Modell beschreibt die räumlichen Theorien und den Revisionsmechanismus mittels eines algebraischen Ansatzes. Für drei Sequenzen räumlicher Theorien wurden drei Mechanismen zum algebraischen Theoriewechsel identifiziert.Die algebraischen Spezifikationen wurden mit einer rein funktionalen Programmiersprache implementiert und machen das vorgestellte Model ausführbar. Experimente der Entwicklungspsychologie können mit dem Modell unter Verwendung der Revisionsmechanismen simuliert werden. Als Eingabe dienen dem Modell abstrakte Perzeptionen, die anhand einer vorgegebenen Menge von Theorien verarbeitet werden. Wiederholte Widersprüche zwischen Beobachtungen in der Umwelt und den von den Theorien generierten Erwartungen lösen Theoriewechsel in der algebraischen Struktur aus. Anhand der Simulationen konnte die Plausibilität des Modells überprüft werden.Es lässt sich der Schluss ziehen, dass Sequenzen naiv räumlicher Theorien durch drei Mechanismen in einem algebraischen Rahmenwerk gebildet werden können. In Zukunft soll die Automatisierung des Mechanismus in einer Multi-Agenten Umgebung erforscht werden. Die Bedeutung von Kommunikationsprozessen zwischen Agenten und deren Einfluss auf räumliche Theoriesequenzen soll untersucht werden."Hard sciences" like physics and geometry define how to build models of spatial reality into a geographical information system. This results in systems lacking user friendliness and suffering from low acceptance because humans conceptualize spatial reality differently.There is a need for formal models of human conceptualizations of the world that are based on common sense respectively naïve conceptualizations.The present research formalizes human spatial conceptualizations using algebraic specifications. I hypothesize that the change of spatial theories can be modeled by an adaptation of axioms. Selected examples of developmental psychology serve as an input for building a framework for the acquisition of spatial theories.The theory theory of cognitive development motivated sequences of spatial theories presented in this work. For three sequence types of theories theory building mechanisms are identified. The novelty is in the formal description of the transition from one theory to another. The formal model describes the spatial theories and their change in one framework.The algebraic specifications have been implemented in a purely functional programming language, which makes them executable. The framework allows to simulate the developed change mechanism in accordance with empirical studies carried out in developmental psychology. Frequent mismatches between observations in the environment and expectations generated by the theories will elicit changes in the algebraic structure.Future work will address the automation of the mechanism in a multi agent environment. The influence of communication processes on spatial concept formation is still an open question of research.20

A web platform for the evaluation of vernacular place names in automatically constructed gazetteers

Vernacular place names pose a research challenge in geographic information retrieval. There is a long standing demand from investigators for a reference collection to train their methods and evaluate their models and data. However no large collection of informal place names associated with type and footprint data is currently available to the GIR community. The present contribution discusses the implementation of a web platform to collect such an evaluation data set. Design considerations of the user interface are addressed and we present first results of a nationwide attempt to collect the vernacular place names of Great Britain. Our result will aid further research in automatic gazetteer construction, considering vernacular place names

Mining the web to detect place names

With the aim to improve the quality of gazetteers for geographic information retrieval systems, we present a method to detect place names employed by people submitting information to Web resources. We investigate how often people refer to a place using locative phrases in web queries and address the problem of defining cognitively significant place names. We propose Web mining as a means to decide whether a given particular named entity is in fact a place

Mining the web to detect place names

ABSTRACT With the aim to improve the quality of gazetteers for geographic information retrieval systems, we present a method to detect place names employed by people submitting information to web resources. We investigate how often people refer to a place using locative phrases in web queries and address the problem of defining cognitively significant place names. We propose web mining as a means to decide whether a given particular named entity is in fact a place