NTRODUCTIONThe debate on vector versus raster based models is nearly as old as the concept of a GIS (Dutton 1979). It wasrestated as a debate between GIS with an object concept (not to be confused with object-oriented as used insoftware engineering; (Worboys 1994) uses the term object based GIS, where objects have sharp boundariesdelimited by vectors and the GIS which model the continuous variation of attributes over space using a regulartessellation - e.g. a raster (Frank 1990). Efforts to merge the two representations were attempted (Peuquet 1983).It has been a very fruitful debate as it has forced us to consider and reconsider the epistemological bases of ourwork and has led to an extensive discussion of fundamental questions (Chrisman 1987), (Mark and Frank 1991),(Mark 1993). The debate has promoted the development of ever more powerful software, achieving a nearlycomplete integration of vector and raster data (Herring 1990).It has been pointed out repeatedly that only few objects in geographic space have natural boundaries whichare sharp and well determined (Couclelis 1992). Most geographic objects seem to be an abstraction of thingswhich have unclear, fuzzy boundaries, if they have boundaries at all. The list includes most natural phenomena,from biotope to mountain range; extensive research efforts center around soil type data (Burrough1993);(Burrough 1986) and often use the techniques of fuzzy logic (Zadeh 1974). Nevertheless, many practicallyused GIS model reality in terms of crisply delimited objects. Cadastral systems, GIS used for facilities’management and automated mapping (AM/FM) and communal information systems all are appropriately orientedtowards distinct objects with well defined boundaries. The same systems, with the same models are also used tomanage soil maps and land use data, where the fiction of sharp boundaries contrasts with our view of reality.Depending on the application area or profession, one or the other spatial concept is more appropriate andallows one to capture the aspects of interest more succinctly. Users are accustomed to see a process described ina particular spatial framework, a legal discussion is most often cast in the framework of spatial objects with crispand determined boundaries whereas a discussion of the application of fertilizer might consider soil types as havingindeterminate boundaries. (Burrough and Frank 1995) and (Couclelis 1995) classify applications or phenomenaaccording to an evolving taxonomy of object types and of boundary types. This leaves two questions open,namely- where do these models of well-defined objects come from and- why are object models with sharp boundaries very often used in applications of GIS despite all obviousproblems with delimiting geographic objects?This paper attempts to address these two questions, starting from the point of view of experiential realism(Lakoff 1987). Experiential realism argues that the natural categories of human cognition are based on theexperience we have of the world and that the way we perceive the world is influenced by our cognitive apparatus(Couclelis 1992) for a practical application to geography (Mark 1993). There are two different environments for ourexperience, namely small scale and large scale (geographic) space. Our daily experience with handling smallobjects in small scale space, e.g., apples, stones, leads to a concept of objects with well defined boundaries. Thiscontrasts with the direct experience of large scale space, which leads to a different conceptual structure of space,mostly without dividing large scale space into delimited objects. These are both fundamental experiences forhuman beings which are deeply embodied in our thinking and give rise to the 'object' and 'field' concept.Experiential realism also assumes that metaphorical mapping (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) can be used toconceive situations in terms of previous experiences in different circumstances. For example, the experience withsmall prototypical objects with well determined boundaries is metaphorically translated to conceive the large scale

The design of LitText follows the traditional research approach in digital humanities (DH): collecting texts for critical reading and underlining parts of interest. Texts, in multiple languages, are prepared with a minimal markup language, and processed by NLP services. The result is converted to RDF (a.k.a. semantic-web, linked-data) triples. Additional data available as linked data on the web (e.g. Wikipedia data) can be added. The DH researcher can then harvest the corpus with SPARQL queries. The approach is demonstrated with the construction of a 20 million word corpus from English, German, Spanish, French and Italian texts and an example query to identify texts where animals behave like humans as it is the case in fables.

In this contribution the possibility to combine terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) measurements and UAS photogrammetry for the detailed description and high quality surveying of a cultural monument will be illustrated by the example of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in the city of Greifswald. Due to the different nature of UAS photogrammetry and TLS walls and windows as well as portions of roofs are captured with a different level of completeness and accuracy. The average deviations of the test areas on the overlap between the two measurement methods ranges from 0.015 m to 0.033 m with standard deviations of 0.025 m to 0.088 m.

Geographic information is one of the fundamental core data sources for various applications. Freely available geographic information knowledge bases are emerging and the spatial dimension has become part of the Linked Open Data initiative. However, geographic information is stored as abstract geographic objects and exploring, extracting, and understanding the information must be facilitated for different user perspectives and use cases. We propose to use a semantic model and an extraction methodology which is aimed at allowing the consumption of geographic information in an intuitive way. We illustrate our approach based on previous work of a highway navigation conceptualization and present a functional approach to exploit granularity extractions targeted at enabling the user to change the point of view in navigation tasks.

Human use of categories exhibits a prototype effect; concepts become more defined through a conversation. Modelling these gradual clarifications of what a word signifies is equally important in human - computer interactions, for example in interactions about geographic concepts and the information that is needed in a given situation. We address here the simplified, but essentially realistic, question of what is meant by "map" and how the concept is refined. We apply the methods Aerts, Gabora and Rosch have described and explore how they can be integrated into practical systems. In this paper we explore the optimal selection of a map through a conversation with the client to elucidate their intentions. The example case contains effects which are similar to the "guppy effect" that is known from the literature and is a key reason to apply quantum mechanical formalism. The results are promising, and we sketch the extension to the construction of "custom made" maps from layers. This will provide users with maps that optimally reflect what map elements should be visible for use in a given context.

The experiment Ranxiao Frances Wang (this issue) carried out with a small number of human subjects suggests that humans can achieve “intuitive comprehension of 4-D space.” Subjects were shown a 3-D projection of a randomly constructed, rotating 4-D object and were asked to estimate the volume of the object. The results showed a significant correlation between subjects’ responses and the calculated volume of the shown 4-D object. Wang concludes that this is empirical evidence that subjects can “directly” apprehend 4-D space, and can build 4-D spatial representations and use them for spatial judgment tasks. This remarkable experiment meets a highly skeptical audience. First, four-dimensional intuition is not likely to have developed in the evolution of human beings—the environment does not present situations where such a capability would be of any benefit. Second, introspection does lead most of us to doubt that we have 4-D imagination or the ability to reason with 4-D objects; all we have is reasoning by analogy, using lower-dimensional (specifically 3-D) objects. Therefore, the article invites a very careful analysis of its claims and the justifications given. Wang herself includes criticism of previous publications for similar claims, and shows how they fail; unfortunately, her own article falls prey to a similar attack.

Since the use of volunteered geographic information (VGI) or crowd sourced data (Goodchild, 2007) became more common, several people proposed the use of such methods of data collection for various fields. Success stories were Wikipedia encyclopaedia and OpenStreetMap (OSM), but also using VGI in land administration has been proposed. Robin McLaren proposed crowd sourcing as a way to get a new citizen collaboration model in land administration to enhance transparency and decrease costs (McLaren, 2011). Keenja et al. discussed the perception of VGI within the Dutch cadastre (Keenja, De Vries, Bennet, & Laarakker, 2012). Basiouka and Potsiou even discuss how crowd sourcing can be used to identify errors in the Hellenic cadastre (Basiouka & Potsiou, 2012). One problem of VGI is the quality control (compare Goodchild & Li, 2012). The problem with most data in a land administration system is that there is only a small group of people that can verify the correctness of information. The correct location of a boundary, for example, can only be assessed by the owners of the pieces of land touching at the boundary (and surveyors after investigation and measurement). How shall VGI then provide reliable data? Boundaries between areas of different use may be visible but land administration is often interested in ownership boundaries. In the paper we discuss the types of data used in land administration as discussed by Dale and McLaughlin (1999). These categories are then analyzed to identify the areas where VGI can actually provide reliable input. What we hope to learn from such an analysis is how to use the methodology of crowd sourcing for land administration, even if the data collection authoritatively.

Modern software engineering, especially for business applications, is process oriented. A focus on process in ontology is therefore warranted. The speci cation of basic processes with algebraic speci cations in the ADT style are straight forward but the approach fails practically for realistically complex processes. The novel approach shown here is the assumption that complex processes are the result of combination of basic processes; the static combintaiotn of states in an ontology translates then directly to the combination of the mechanism which apply changes to the state. Two combination methods are identi ed: products of states which lead to process descriptions as sum of processes, and indexed set of states, which lead to process descriptions as products of index and processes. The method is shown here with an example of a multi-step process to prepare and get a passport from an state o ce. The ontology of the process can be extended in a principled way to include the information necessary for the automatic derivation of an optimal plan, as shown in the last part of the paper.

The personalized urban multi-criteria quasi-optimum path problem (PUMQPP) is a branch of multi-criteria shortest path problems (MSPPs) and it is classified as a NP-hard problem. To solve the PUMQPP, by considering dependent criteria in route selection, there is a need for approaches that achieve the best compromise of possible solutions/routes. Recently, invasive weed optimization (IWO) algorithm is introduced and used as a novel algorithm to solve many continuous optimization problems. In this study, the modified algorithm of IWO was designed, implemented, evaluated, and compared with the genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the PUMQPP in a directed urban transportation network. In comparison with the GA, the results have shown the significant superiority of the proposed modified IWO algorithm in exploring a discrete search-space of the urban transportation network. In this regard, the proposed modified IWO algorithm has reached better results in fitness function, quality metric and running-time values in comparison with those of the GA.

Object representation and reasoning in vector based geographic information systems (GIS) is based on Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry is built upon Euclid's first postulate, stating that two points uniquely determine a line. This postulate makes geometric constructions unambiguous and thereby provides the foundation for consistent geometric reasoning. It holds for exact coordinate points and lines, but is violated, if points and lines are allowed to have extension. As an example for a point that has extension consider a point feature that represents the city of Vienna in a small scale GIS map representation. Geometric constructions with such a point feature easily produce inconsistencies in the data. The present paper addresses the issue of consistency by formalizing Euclid's first postulate for geometric primitives that have extension. We identify a list of six consequences from introducing extension: These are 'new qualities' that are not present in exact geometric reasoning, but must be taken into account when formalizing Euclid's first postulate for extended primitives. One important consequence is the positional tolerance of the incidence relation ("on"-relation). As another consequence, equality of geometric primitives becomes a matter of degree. To account for this fact, we propose a formalization of Euclid's first postulate in Łukasiewicz t-norm fuzzy logic. A model of the proposed formalization is given in the projective plane with elliptic metric. This is not a restriction, since the elliptic metric is locally Euclidean. We introduce graduated geometric reasoning with Rational Pavelka Logic as a means of approximating and propagating positional tolerance through the steps of a geometric construction process. Since the axioms (postulates) of geometry built upon one another, the proposed formalization of Euclid's first postulate provides one building block of a geometric calculus that accounts for positional tolerance in a consistent way. The novel contribution of the paper is to define geometric reasoning with extended primitives as a calculus that propagates positional tolerance. Also new is the axiomatic approach to positional uncertainty and the associated consistency issue.

Many applications in geosciences need to deal with 3D objects. For this, among other requirements, 2D spatial analyses must be extended to support 3D objects. This extension is an important research topic in GIS and computational geometry. Approaches that extend an existing algorithm for a 2D spatial analysis to work for 3D or higher dimensions lead to different algorithms and implementations for different dimensions. Following such approaches the code for a package that supports spatial analyses for both 2D and 3D cases is nearly two times the code size for 2D. While dimension independent algorithms are an alternative toward generalization, they are still implemented separately for each dimension. The main reason is that each dimension is modeled using a different data structure that requires its own implementation details. In this article we use the list data structure to implement n-simplexes—as a data type that supports spatial objects of any dimension. Primitive operations on n-simplexes become manipulating functions over lists, which are independent of the number and type of the elements. We define spatial analyses as combinations of primitive operations on n-simplexes. Since the primitive operations on n-simplexes have been implemented independently of dimension, the spatial analyses are dimension independent, too. Construction of Delaunay triangulation of nD points, as the basic data structure for many geoscientific researches, is used here as the running example. The implementation results for Delaunay triangulation of some 2D and 3D points are presented and discussed. As a case study the implementations are used to calculate the area and volume of the reservoir of a dam at different water levels, which leads to a level–surface–volume diagram.

This paper studies emergence/generation of power law in rank-order distribution of axial line length, which is a global pattern observed in real cities, due to interaction of a set of seven simple spatial rules at a local scale. These rules and their interactions form a model expected to simulate the morphological structure of free spaces in unplanned organic pedestrian small cities. Effects of each of the seven rules are discussed through repeated simulations of eight possible combinations of the rules, using a bottom-up process. The results show that the rules generate environments with statistically stable rank-order distribution of axial line length that follows the power law. It means that the axial maps of the simulated environments have a scale-free hierarchical structure such that their distributions lean toward short axial lines. It also represents dominance of local spatial structure, as the model renders a faster rate of growth at a local scale while allowing a steady growth at a global scale.

Abstract The effort to clarify the terminology to describe wayfinding is overdue, and I applaud Wiener, Büchner, and Hölscher for their contributions, in papers included in this issue. A clear terminology is important for reporting and discussing wayfinding research, but it is probably important for the design, planning, and analyzing of experiments as well. I have three comments regarding the taxonomy of the authors: 1. They advertise a taxonomy, but their important contribution is in the identification of properties they use to distinguish the taxa. 2. Their definitions may lead to misunderstandings; replacing the verbal descriptions by formal definitions using a computational model avoids ambiguities. 3. They classify the wayfinding task based on the knowledge of the navigator alone; the environment should be included to achieve a more precise comprehensive, with all factors influencing the selection of a strategy.

for EUG Vienna 2009 Session knowledge and ontologies Philosophers aim at a single ontology that describes “how the world is”; for information systems we aim only at ontologies that describe a conceptualization of reality (Guarino 1995; Gruber 2005). A conceptualization of the world implies a spatial and temporal scale: what are the phenomena, the objects and the speed of their change? Few articles (Reitsma et al. 2003) seem to address that an ontology is scale specific (but many articles indicate that ontologies are scale-free in another sense namely that they are scale free in the link densities between concepts). The scale in the conceptualization can be linked to the observation process. The extent of the support of the physical observation instrument and the sampling theorem indicate what level of detail we find in a dataset. These rules apply for remote sensing or sensor networks alike. An ontology of observations must include scale or level of detail, and concepts derived from observations should carry this relation forward. A simple example: in high resolution remote sensing image agricultural plots and roads between them are shown, at lower resolution, only the plots and not the roads are visible. This gives two ontologies, one with plots and roads, the other with plots only. Note that a neighborhood relation in the two different ontologies also yield different results. References Gruber, T. (2005). TagOntology a way to agree on the semantics of tagging data. Retrieved October 29, 2005., from http://tomgruber.org/writing/tagontology-tagcapm-talk.pdf. Guarino, N. (1995). Ontology, Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation. International Journal of Human and Computer Studies. Special Issue on Formal Ontology, Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation, edited by N. Guarino and R. Poli 43(5/6). Reitsma, F. and T. Bittner (2003). Process, Hierarchy, and Scale. Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information ScienceInternational Conference COSIT'03.