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2013 | Book

Spatial Primitives from a Cognitive Perspective: Sensitivity to Changes in Various Geometric Properties Read chapter Read first chapter

Spatial Information Theory

11th International Conference, COSIT 2013, Scarborough, UK, September 2-6, 2013. Proceedings

Editors: Thora Tenbrink, John Stell, Antony Galton, Zena Wood

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Lecture Notes in Computer Science

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2013, held in Scarborough, UK, in September 2013. The 28 papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 full paper submissions. The following topics are addressed: spatial change, wayfinding and assistance, representing spatial data, handling language data, spatial language and computation, spatial ontology, spatial reasoning and representation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Spatial Change

Spatial Primitives from a Cognitive Perspective: Sensitivity to Changes in Various Geometric Properties
Abstract
This study addressed the issue of spatial concepts by examining the perception of changes in shape, orientation, size, and cyclic order caused by the transformations of deformation, rotation, scaling, and reflection. 49 participants viewed 36 geometric configurations to which different types and degrees of transformations were applied, and answered how much they thought the configurations were different from each other. Participants perceived deformed configurations as more dissimilar as the degree of deformation became larger. Participants’ perception of geometric properties, however, did not conform to the mathematical classification of transformations. They discriminated between deformed, rotated, scaled, and reflected configurations when the degree of deformation was small; but the perceived difference became smaller as the degree of deformation became larger. Furthermore, mental-rotation ability affected the sensitivity to geometric properties, with low-spatial people attending to changes in orientation caused by rotation and reflection. Implications for spatial learning and education are discussed.
Toru Ishikawa
Transitional Spaces: Between Indoor and Outdoor Spaces
Abstract
Traditionally, spaces have been classified as being located either indoors or outdoors. On closer inspection, however, this distinction is not as clear cut as usually assumed. For example, when navigating complex urban landscapes, pedestrians frequently traverse tunnels, enclosed footbridges or partially roofed courtyards. In this paper, we investigate this type of spaces between indoor and outdoor areas. We present an initial definition of transitional spaces based on a conceptual analysis, and then report on results from an empirical study with 103 pedestrians, whom we interviewed in an urban area. A statistical and linguistic analysis of the outcomes of the study provides evidence for the existence of transitional spaces and their use. The outcomes also support an initial set of characteristics and properties that further clarify these areas. The results pave the way for the further investigation of transitional spaces, e.g. in terms of providing effective navigation support through them.
Christian Kray, Holger Fritze, Thore Fechner, Angela Schwering, Rui Li, Vanessa Joy Anacta
Representing and Reasoning about Changing Spatial Extensions of Geographic Features
Abstract
This paper presents a logical framework for representing and reasoning about events and processes which are characterised by changes in the spatial extension of geographic features. This work addresses some crucial (and still open) issues on the modelling of geographic dynamics, such as how to represent the relationship between events, processes and geographic features and how to relate event and process types to their particular instances; how to handle spatial and temporal vagueness to associate specific spatio-temporal boundaries with events and process instances; and how to provide a flexible representation which can be applied to distinct geographic phenomena as well as which can accommodate different standpoints on these phenomena. Particular focus is placed on phenomena which can be identified from spatio-temporal data of the geographic domain, and therefore a discussion is given on the way the logical framework can be linked to data. Finally, we present a system prototype implemented to experiment the proposed logical framework with real data.
Claudio E. C. Campelo, Brandon Bennett
Trust and Reputation Models for Quality Assessment of Human Sensor Observations
Abstract
With the rise of human sensor observation as a major source of geospatial information, the traditional assessment of information quality based on parameters like accuracy, consistency and completeness is shifting to new measures. In volunteered geographic information (VGI) these conventional parameters are either lacking or not explicit. Regarding human observation quality as fitness for purpose, we propose to use trust and reputation as proxy measures of it. Trustworthy observations then take precedence over less trustworthy observations. Further, we propose that trust and reputation have spatial and temporal dimensions and we build computational models of trust for quality assessment including these dimensions. We present the case study of the H2.0 VGI project for water quality management. Through agent based modeling, the study has established the validity of a spatio-temporal trust model for assessing the trustworthiness and hence the quality of human observations. We first introduce a temporally sensitive trust model and then discuss the extension of the temporal model with spatial dimensions and their effects on the computational trust model.
Mohamed Bishr, Werner Kuhn
Using Maptrees to Characterize Topological Change
Abstract
This paper further develops the theory of maptrees, introduced in [13]. There exist well-known methods, based upon combinatorial maps, for topologically complete representations of embeddings of connected graphs in closed surfaces. Maptrees extend these methods to provide topologically complete representations of embeddings of possibly disconnected graphs. The focus of this paper is the use of maptrees to admit fine-grained representations of topological change. The ability of maptrees to represent complex spatial processes is demonstrated through case studies involving conceptual neighborhoods and cellular processes.
Michael Worboys

Wayfinding and Assistance

Resolving Conceptual Mode Confusion with Qualitative Spatial Knowledge in Human-Robot Interaction
Abstract
This paper presents our work on using qualitative spatial knowledge to resolve conceptual mode confusion occurring frequently during the communication process between human operators and mobile robots. In order to bridge the gap between human’s mental representation about space and that of a mobile robot, a qualitative spatial beliefs model is applied. Then with a computational framework based on qualitative spatial reasoning offered by this model, a set of high level strategies are developed and used to support the interpretation of natural language route instructions to mobile robots for navigation tasks.
Cui Jian, Hui Shi
Event Recognition during the Exploration of Line-Based Graphics in Virtual Haptic Environments
Abstract
Pictorial representations are widely used in human problem solving. For blind and visually impaired people, haptic interfaces can provide perceptual access to graphical representations. We propose line-based graphics as a type of graphics, which are suitable to be explored by blind and visually impaired people, and which can be successfully augmented with auditory assistance by speech or non-verbal sounds. The central prerequisite for realizing powerful assistive interaction is monitoring the users’ haptic exploration and in particular the recognition of exploratory events. The representational layers of line-based graphics as well as of exploration-event descriptions are specified by qualitative spatial propositions. Based on these representations, event recognition is performed by rule-based processes.
Matthias Kerzel, Christopher Habel
Cognitive Transactions – A Communication Model
Abstract
Whenever a person gets lost and there is no way to access stored spatial information, e.g. in the form of maps, they need to rely on the knowledge of other humans instead. This situation can be modelled as a communication setting where a person lacking spatial knowledge requests information from a knowledgeable source. The result are cognitive transactions in which information over various levels of detail (LoD) is negotiated. The overall goal is to agree on a shared spatial representation with equal semantics, i.e., common ground. We present a communication model that accounts for establishing common ground between two agents. The agents use a modified ”wayfinding choreme” language and special signals to negotiate the LoD. Findings of a case study were used to verify and refine our work.
Paul Weiser, Andrew U. Frank
Strategy-Based Dynamic Real-Time Route Prediction
Abstract
People often experience difficulty traversing novel environments. Predicting where wayfinders will go is desirable for navigational aids to prevent mistakes and influence inefficient traversals. Wayfinders are thought to use criteria, such as minimizing distance, that comprise wayfinding strategies for choosing routes through environments. In this contribution, we computationally generated routes for five different wayfinding strategies and used the routes to predict subsequent decision points that wayfinders in an empirical study traversed. It was found that no single strategy was consistently more accurate than all the others across the two environments in our study. We next performed real-time classification to infer the most probable strategy to be in use by a wayfinder, and used the classified strategy to predict subsequent decision points. The results demonstrate the efficacy of using multiple wayfinding strategies to dynamically predict subsequently traversed decision points, which has implications for navigational aids, among other real-world applications.
Makoto Takemiya, Toru Ishikawa
An Affordance-Based Simulation Framework for Assessing Spatial Suitability
Abstract
In their everyday decision processes, humans depend on their ability to evaluate the suitability of environmental objects for specific actions. Suitability can therefore be understood as an abstract quality that is determined by properties of both the human agent and the environment as well as the action to be performed. The notion of such mutual dependency relationships with regards to action potentials is closely related to the concept of affordances as proposed by Gibson (1977). In this paper, a conceptual framework is proposed for the simulation of human agents assessing spatial suitability. In our model, actions represent a central element and are modeled at different hierarchical levels of abstraction. Finally, a simulation of pedestrian route choice is presented as a case study in order to explain the assessment process.
David Jonietz, Sabine Timpf
A Probabilistic Framework for Object Descriptions in Indoor Route Instructions
Abstract
Automatically generated route instructions are common in modern cars, but for indoor environments, such systems hardly exist, possibly due to the fundamental difference of street networks and indoor environments. Indoor environments often lack the clear decision points present in street networks and involve a spatially complex layout. Therefore, good route instructions for indoor environments should provide context by relating instructions to environmental features—they need to describe and locate objects. This paper is concerned with automatic generation of in-advance route instructions for indoor scenarios. Motivated by empirical research, we propose a probabilistic framework for generating referring expressions using vague properties and graded models of spatial relations. We discuss the relevance of this framework for generating indoor route instructions and demonstrate the appropriateness of this approach in case studies.
Vivien Mast, Diedrich Wolter

Representing Spatial Data

Linked Data and Time – Modeling Researcher Life Lines by Events
Abstract
Most datasets on the Linked Data Web impose a static view on the represented entities and relations between them, neglecting temporal aspects of the reality they represent. In this paper, we address the representation of resources in their spatial, temporal and thematic context. We review the controversial proposals for the representation of time-dependent relations on the Linked Data Web. We argue that representing and using such relations is made hard through the direct encoding of inadequate conceptualizations, rather than through inherent limitations of the representation language RDF. Using the example of researcher life lines extracted from curricula vitæ, we show how to model sequences of activities in terms of events. We build upon the event participation pattern from the DOLCE Ultralite+DnS Ontology and show how places and social roles that people play during their careers relate to events. Furthermore, we demonstrate how scientific achievements can be related to events in a career trajectory by means of temporal reasoning.
Johannes Trame, Carsten Keßler, Werner Kuhn
Human Spatial Behavior, Sensor Informatics, and Disaggregate Data
Abstract
With the increasing availability of tracking technology, researchers have new tools for examining patterns of human spatial behavior. However, due to limitations of GPS, traditional tracking tools cannot be applied reliably indoors. Monitoring indoor movement can significantly improve building management, emergency operations, and security control; it can also reveal relationships among spatial behavior and decision making, the complexity of such spaces, and the existence of different strategies or approaches to acquiring and using knowledge about the built environment (indoors and out). By employing methods from computer science and GIS we show that pedestrian indoor movement trajectories can be successfully tracked and analyzed with existing sensor and WiFi-based positioning systems over long periods of time and at fine grained temporal scales. We present a month-long experiment with 37 participants tracked through an institutional setting and demonstrate how post-processing of the collected sensor dataset of over 36 million records can be employed to better understand indoor human behavior.
Anastasia Petrenko, Scott Bell, Kevin Stanley, Winchel Qian, Anton Sizo, Dylan Knowles
Comparing Expert and Non-expert Conceptualisations of the Land: An Analysis of Crowdsourced Land Cover Data
Abstract
This research compares expert and non-expert conceptualisations of land cover data collected through a Google Earth web-based interface. In so doing it seeks to determine the impacts of varying landscape conceptualisations held by different groups of VGI contributors on decisions that may be made using crowdsourced data, in this case to select the best global land cover dataset in each location. Whilst much other work has considered the quality of VGI, as yet little research has considered the impact of varying semantics and conceptualisations on the use of VGI in formal scientific analyses. This study found that conceptualisation of cropland varies between experts and non-experts. A number of areas for further research are outlined.
Alexis Comber, Chris Brunsdon, Linda See, Steffen Fritz, Ian McCallum

Handling Language Data

The Meanings of the Generic Parts of Toponyms: Use and Limitations of Gazetteers in Studies of Landscape Terms
Abstract
Are the contents of toponyms meaningless, as it is often claimed in linguistic literature, or can the generic parts in toponyms, such as hill in Black Hill, be used to infer landscape descriptions? We investigate this question by, firstly, linking gazetteer data with topographic characteristics, and, secondly, by conducting analysis of how the use of landscape terms might have changed over time in a historic corpus. We thus aim at answering a linguistic, and ethnophysiographic, research question through digital input data and processing. Our study area is Switzerland and our main focus is on geographic eminences, and in particular on the use of the terms Spitze, Horn and Berg. We show that most prominent generic parts in toponyms show expected topographic characteristics. However, not all generic parts strictly follow this rule, as in the case of Berg. Some generic parts have lost their meaning in standard language over time (e.g. Horn). We therefore put a cautionary note on the use of generic parts in toponyms in landscape studies, but point out that the subtle details of these differences provide rich topics for future research.
Curdin Derungs, Flurina Wartmann, Ross S. Purves, David M. Mark
Creating a Corpus of Geospatial Natural Language
Abstract
The description of location using natural language is of interest for a number of research activities including the automated interpretation and generation of natural language to ease interaction with geographic information systems. For such activities, examples of geospatial natural language are usually collected from the personal knowledge of researchers, or in small scale collection activities specific to the project concerned. This paper describes the process used to develop a more generic corpus of geospatial natural language.
The paper discusses the development and evaluation of four methods for semi-automated harvesting of geospatial natural language clauses from text to create a corpus of geospatial natural language. The most successful method uses a set of geospatial syntactic templates that describe common patterns of grammatical geospatial word categories and provide a precision of 0.66. Particular challenges were posed by the range of English dialects included, as well as metaphoric and sporting references.
Kristin Stock, Robert C. Pasley, Zoe Gardner, Paul Brindley, Jeremy Morley, Claudia Cialone

Spatial Language and Computation

From Descriptions to Depictions: A Conceptual Framework
Abstract
People use verbal descriptions and graphical depictions to communicate spatial information, thus externalizing their spatial mental representations. In many situations, such as in emergency response, the ability to translate the content of verbal descriptions into a sketch map could greatly assist with the interpretation of the message. In this paper, we present an outline of a semi-automatic framework enabling seamless transition between verbal descriptions and graphical sketches of precinct-scale urban environments. The proposed framework relies on a three-step approach: NL parsing, with spatial named entity and spatial relation recognition in natural language text; the construction of a spatial Property Graph capturing the spatial relationships between pairs of entities; and the sketch drawing step where the identified entities are dynamically placed on a canvas in a manner that minimizes conflicts between the verbalized spatial relationships, thus providing a plausible representation of the described environment. The approach is manually demonstrated on a natural language description of a university campus, and the opportunities and challenges of the suggested framework are discussed. The paper concludes by highlighting the contributions of the framework and by providing insights for its actual implementation.
Maria Vasardani, Sabine Timpf, Stephan Winter, Martin Tomko
Reading Geography between the Lines: Extracting Local Place Knowledge from Text
Abstract
The computational linguistics tool Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) can approximately map out geographic placenames within spatially unreferenced web-based text. This paper discusses LSA’s practical potential to help discover and locate local vernacular (unofficial) geographic names. It may also highlight people’s cognitive distortions and biases, creating hypotheses for human experiments, and hinting at identical mechanisms for semantic and spatial memory at these scales. Some successes, problems and methodological issues are illustrated and discussed, with reference to a sample dataset of one area of England. Previous findings were replicated and surpassed, but the space may show more topological than metric tendencies.
Clare Davies
Modeling Spatial Knowledge from Verbal Descriptions
Abstract
Over the past few years, several alternative approaches have been suggested to represent the spatial knowledge that emerges from natural environments. This paper introduces a rule-based approach whose objective is to generate a spatial semantic network derived from several humans reporting a navigation process in a natural environment. Verbal descriptions are decomposed and characterized by a graph-based model where actions and landmarks are the main abstractions. A set of rules implemented as first order predicate calculus are identified and applied, and allow to merge the common knowledge inferred from route descriptions. A spatial semantic network is derived and provides a global and semantic view of the environment. The whole approach is illustrated by a case study and some preliminary experimental results.
Lamia Belouaer, David Brosset, Christophe Claramunt
A Computational Model for Reference Object Selection in Spatial Relations
Abstract
Automatic generation of adequate spatial relations with regard to reference object selection is a nontrivial problem. In the present paper, we develop, implement and evaluate a computational model for reference object selection using empirically derived conceptual spatial strategies. The attribution of roles (reference object and located object) in object configurations was investigated to derive conceptual spatial strategies with regard to size and position of the objects. These strategies were implemented in a computational model to generate spatial descriptions of furniture configurations. To evaluate the automatically generated descriptions, we contrasted them with analog sentences with inverted roles of reference and located object and asked participants to choose the more adequate description out of the two. The spatial descriptions automatically generated were chosen significantly more often. This indicates that taking spatial conceptual strategies into account improves the adequacy of automatically generated spatial descriptions.
Katrin Johannsen, Agnes Swadzba, Leon Ziegler, Sven Wachsmuth, Jan P. De Ruiter
Fundamental Cognitive Concepts of Space (and Time): Using Cross-Linguistic, Crowdsourced Data to Cognitively Calibrate Modes of Overlap
Abstract
This article makes several contributions to research on fundamental spatial and temporal concepts: First, we set out to render the notion of fundamental concepts of space and time more precise. Second, we introduce an efficient approach for collecting behavioral data combining crowdsourcing technology, efficient experimental software tools, and an effective and comprehensive analysis methodology. Third, we present behavioral studies that allow for identifying and calibrating potential candidates of fundamental spatial concepts from a cognitive perspective. Fourth, one prominent topic in the area of spatio-temporal cognition is the influence of language on how humans conceptualize their dynamic spatial environments. We used the aforementioned framework to collect data not only from English speaking participants but also from native Chinese and Korean speakers. Our application domain are the modes of overlap proposed by Galton [13]. We are able to show that the originally proposed spatial relations of the region connection calculus and intersection models are capturing cognitively fundamental distinctions that humans make with respect to modes of overlap. While finer distinctions are formally possible, they should not be considered fundamental conceptualizations in either Chinese, Korean, or English. The results show that our framework allows for efficiently answering questions about fundamental concepts of space, time, and space-time essential for theories of spatial information.
Alexander Klippel, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Jinlong Yang, Jennifer S. Mason, Eun-Kyeong Kim, David M. Mark

Spatial Ontology

Kinds of Full Physical Containment
Abstract
Full physical containment is the relation in which one physical entity is completely inside another. It is central to the description of natural resources held in reservoirs above or below the surface. Previous ontological representations of containment are located in abstract space, incomplete, or insufficiently incorporate voids, so in this paper we develop a complete taxonomy for the full containment relation that is situated in physical space and integrates voids. The taxonomy is formalized in a mereotopological theory and specializes the DOLCE foundational ontology, thus advancing hydro ontology development.
Torsten Hahmann, Boyan Brodaric
A Vocabulary of Topological and Containment Relations for a Practical Biological Ontology
Abstract
We describe the development of a formal language for expressing qualitative spatial knowledge. The language is intended as a practical tool for knowledge representation and has been designed with the particular aim of encoding the qualitative spatial information found in an introductory college level biology textbook. We have taken a corpus-driven approach in which we first identify the requirements by analysing the sentences in the book, design the vocabulary, and then check its adequacy by applying it to model the sentences containing spatial knowledge. Our technical solution extends the well-known Region Connection Calculus with predicates for referring to surfaces, cavities and different forms of containment. We illustrate the application of this vocabulary in encoding sample sentences from the book, and give empirical results regarding the correspondence between the defined relations of our formal theory and the actual usage of vocabulary pertaining to ‘surrounding’, ‘enclosure’ and ‘containment’ in the textbook.
Brandon Bennett, Vinay Chaudhri, Nikhil Dinesh
A Geo-ontology Design Pattern for Semantic Trajectories
Abstract
Trajectory data have been used in a variety of studies, including human behavior analysis, transportation management, and wildlife tracking. While each study area introduces a different perspective, they share the need to integrate positioning data with domain-specific information. Semantic annotations are necessary to improve discovery, reuse, and integration of trajectory data from different sources. Consequently, it would be beneficial if the common structure encountered in trajectory data could be annotated based on a shared vocabulary, abstracting from domain-specific aspects. Ontology design patterns are an increasingly popular approach to define such flexible and self-contained building blocks of annotations. They appear more suitable for the annotation of interdisciplinary, multi-thematic, and multi-perspective data than the use of foundational and domain ontologies alone. In this paper, we introduce such an ontology design pattern for semantic trajectories. It was developed as a community effort across multiple disciplines and in a data-driven fashion. We discuss the formalization of the pattern using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and apply the pattern to two different scenarios, personal travel and wildlife monitoring.
Yingjie Hu, Krzysztof Janowicz, David Carral, Simon Scheider, Werner Kuhn, Gary Berg-Cross, Pascal Hitzler, Mike Dean, Dave Kolas

Spatial Reasoning and Representation

RCC and the Theory of Simple Regions in ℝ2
Abstract
The theory of mereology and its topological extensions, called mereotopologies, are point-free approaches that allow to model information while avoiding several puzzling assumptions typical of set-theoretical systems. Although points can be introduced in a mereology or mereotopology, the idea is that one does so only when their existence is clearly motivated. The Region Connection Calculus, RCC, is a mereotopological system that assumes upfront the existence of points: points must be accepted for the system to have the desired semantics. This is awkward from the mereological viewpoint and is considered unsatisfactory from the cognitive and the philosophical perspectives on which mereology rests.
We prove that, in dimension two and with the standard semantics, a theory equivalent to RCC can be given without any reference to points at the semantic level also. The theory, based on mereology, uses the topological primitive ‘being a simple region’ (aka ‘being strongly self-connected’).
Stefano Borgo
The Logic of NEAR and FAR
Abstract
We propose a new qualitative spatial logic based on metric (distance) relations between spatial objects. We provide a sound and complete axiomatisation of the logic with respect to metric models. The logic is intended for use in checking consistency of matching geospatial individuals from different data sets, where some data sets may be imprecise (e.g. crowd-sourced data).
Heshan Du, Natasha Alechina, Kristin Stock, Michael Jackson
The Topology of Spatial Scenes in ℝ2
Abstract
Spatial scenes are abstractions of some geographic reality, focusing on the spatial objects identified and their spatial relations. Such qualitative models of space enable spatial querying, computational comparisons for similarity, and the generation of verbal descriptions. A specific strength of spatial scenes is that they offer a focus on particular types of spatial relations. While past approaches to representing spatial scenes, by recording exhaustively all binary spatial relations, capture accurately how pairs of objects are related to each other, they may fail to distinguish certain spatial properties that are enabled by an ensemble of objects. This paper overcomes such limitations by introducing a model that considers (1) the topology of potentially complexly structured spatial objects, (2) modeling applicable relations by their boundary contacts, and (3) considering exterior partitions and exterior relations. Such qualitative scene descriptions have all ingredients to generate topologically correct graphical renderings or verbal scene descriptions.
Joshua A. Lewis, Matthew P. Dube, Max J. Egenhofer
Algebraic Properties of Qualitative Spatio-temporal Calculi
Abstract
Qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning is based on so-called qualitative calculi. Algebraic properties of these calculi have several implications on reasoning algorithms. But what exactly is a qualitative calculus? And to which extent do the qualitative calculi proposed meet these demands? The literature provides various answers to the first question but only few facts about the second. In this paper we identify the minimal requirements to binary spatio-temporal calculi and we discuss the relevance of the according axioms for representation and reasoning. We also analyze existing qualitative calculi and provide a classification involving different notions of relation algebra.
Frank Dylla, Till Mossakowski, Thomas Schneider, Diedrich Wolter
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Spatial Information Theory
Editors
Thora Tenbrink
John Stell
Antony Galton
Zena Wood
Copyright Year
2013
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-01790-7
Print ISBN
978-3-319-01789-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01790-7

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