Theories and Methods of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Space

Book excerpt: This volume collects the papers presented at the first international conference dedicated to spatial and temporal reasoning in geographic space, entitled "GIS: from space to territory - theories and methods of spatio-temporal reasoning". Within the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA, one of the supporters of the conference) the importance of spatial and temporal reasoning was recognized several years ago. Initial research found that spatial reasoning in geographic or large-scale space is different from spatial reasoning in small-scale space, as usually dealt with in robotics and expertsystems. Temporal reasoning has attracted interest in the artificial intelligence community. The volume also includes two invited papers: "Do people understand spatial concepts: the case of first-order primtives" by R.G. Golledge, and "Temporal databases" by R.T. Snodgrass.