19308
INFSCI 2460: Spatial Reasoning for GIS

Spring 2008 (2084)
Pre: INFSCI 2300
Wed 3:00 - 5:50pm IS 405

Instructor: Dr. Stephen Hirtle
Office: 2B01 IS Building 
Office Phone: 412-624-9434
Email: hirtle@pitt.edu
GSA: none
Secretary: Mary Stewart, 720 IS Bldg, 412-624-9402
Office Hours: Tues 1:30 - 3:00 or by appt.

Overview. The ability to reason about spatial objects is fundamental to understanding spatial systems. This course discusses fundamental issues in qualitative spatial reasoning, spatial languages, and spatial decision-making. Applications of spatial reasoning to be addressed in the course include problems of navigation and interface issues for GIS. The course meets the requirements of the Cognitive Systems area in the MSIS program and will also prepare PhD students for the comprehensive exam in the area of spatial reasoning.

Required Textbook.

Readings. There will be one chapter from the text or four articles per week from the current literature. You need to read the appropriate readings before the class in which they are assigned and to come to the meeting prepared to discuss them thoughtfully. You should be prepared to answer questions that I pose and to contribute ideas, suggestions, and questions of your own.

Readings-1 Spatial Cognition

  1. Egenhofer, M., & Mark, D. M. (1995). Naive geography. In A. U. Frank & W. Kuhn (Eds.), Spatial information theory: A theoretical basis for GIS (pp. 1-15). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
  2. Mark, D. M., Freksa, C., Hirtle, S. C., Lloyd, R., & Tversky, B. (1999). Cognitive models of geographical space. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 13(8), 747.
  3. Medyckyj-Scott, D., & Blades, M. (1992). Human spatial cognition - its relevance to the design and use of spatial information-systems. Geoforum, 23(2), 215.
  4. Montello, D. R., & Freundschuh, S. M. (1995). Sources of spatial knowledge and their implications for GIS: An introduction. Geographical Systems, 2, 169-176.

Readings-2 Modeling

  1. Cohn, A. G., Bennett, B., Gooday, J., & Gotts, N. M. (1997). Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning with the region connection calculus. GeoInformatica, 1, 275-316.
  2. De Floriani, L., Marzano, P., & Puppo, E. (1993). Spatial queries and data models. In Cosit 1993 (pp. 113-138).
  3. Egenhofer, M. J., & Franzosa, R. D. (1995). On the equivalence of topological relations. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 9, 133-152.
  4. Helbing, D., Keltsch, J., & Molnar, P. (1997). Modelling the evolution of human trail systems. Nature, 388(6637), 47.

Readings-3 Ontologies

  1. Kuhn, W. (2001). Ontologies in support of activities in geographical space. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 15, 613-631.
  2. Mark, D. M., Smith, B., Egenhofer, M., & Hirtle, S. C. (2004). Ontological foundations for geographic information science. In R. McMaster & L. Usery (Eds.), A research agenda for geographic information science (pp. 335-350). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
  3. Raubal, M. (2001). Ontology and epistemology for agent-based wayfinding simulation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 15, 653-665.
  4. Smith, B., & Mark, D. M. (2001). Geographical categories: An ontological investigation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 15 591-612.

Readings-4 Applications

  1. Abowd, G. D., Mynatt, E. D., & Rodden, T. (2003). The human experience. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1, 48-57.
  2. Egenhofer, M. J., & Kuhn, W. (1998). Beyond desktop GIS. In Proceedings GIS plannet. Lisbon.
  3. MacEachren, A. (1994). Time as a cartographic variable. In H. M. Hearnshaw & D. J. Unwin (Eds.), Visualization in geographical information systems (pp. 115-130). New York: Wiley.
  4. Timpf, S. (2003). Geographic activity models. In M. Duckham, M. F. Goodchild & M. F. Worboys (Eds.), Foundations of geographic information science (pp. 241-254). London: Taylor & Francis.

Readings-5 Geographic Information

  1. Goodchild, M. F. (2003). The nature and value of geographic information. In Duckham, M., Goodchild, M. F., & Worboys, M. F. (Eds). Foundations of geographic information science (Chap 2.; pp. 19-32). London: Taylor & Francis.
  2. Worboys, M. F. (2003). Communicating Geographic Information in Context. In Duckham, M., Goodchild, M. F., & Worboys, M. F. (Eds). Foundations of geographic information science (Chap 3.; pp. 33-46). London: Taylor & Francis.
  3. Frank, A.U. (2003). Pragmatic cnformation content - How to measure the information in a route description. In Duckham, M., Goodchild, M. F., & Worboys, M. F. (Eds). Foundations of geographic information science (Chap 4.; pp. 47-68). London: Taylor & Francis.
  4. Montello, D. R., Goodchild, M. F., Gottsegen, J., & Fohl, P. (2003). Where's downtown? Behavioral methods for determining referents of vague spatial queries. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 3(2&3), 185-204.

Readings-6 Communication and Temporal GIS

  1. Hornsby, K., & Egenhofer, M. (2000). Identity-based change: A foundation for spatio-temporal knowledge representation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 14, 207-224.
  2. Knauff, M., Jola, C., & Strube, G. (2001). Spatial reasoning: No need for visual information. In D. R. Montello (Ed.), Lecture notes in computer science (pp. 447).
  3. Tversky, B., Lee, P., & Mainwaring, S. (1999). Why do speakers mix perspectives? Spatial Cognition and Computation, 1(4), 399.
  4. Peuquet, D. (2001). Making space for time: Issues in space-time data representation. GeoInformatica, 5, 11-31.

Readings-7 Future Directions

  1. Baus, J., & Kray, C. (2002). Frames of reference, positional information and navigational assistance. Paper presented at the FLAIRS Conference.
  2. Butz, A., Baus, J., Krüger, A., & Lohse, M. (2001). A hybrid indoor navigation system. In Iui2001: International conference on intelligent user interfaces (pp. 25-33). New York: ACM Press.
  3. Elias, B. (2003). Extracting landmarks with data mining methods. In W. Kuhn, M. Worboys & S. Timpf (Eds.), Spatial information theory: Foundations of geographic information science; (International Conference, COSIT 2003, Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland ed., pp. 375-389): Springer-Verlag.
  4. Klippel, A., Richter, K.-F., Barkowsky, T., & Freksa, C. (2005). The cognitive reality of schematic maps. In L. Meng, A. Zipf & T. Reichenbacher (Eds.), Map-based mobile services - theories, methods and implementations (pp. 57-74). Berlin: Springer.

Assignments. The course will involve a series of activities that will be graded. Half of your grade will be determined by various weekly activities. The other half will be based on a comprehensive review paper or project submitted at the end of the term.

Article Reviews (40 points). Ten review of articles will should be posted to the discussion board of courseweb. These reviews should 200-300 word essays discussing the major contribution of the article, plus your personal observations about the research approach, highlighting benefits and/or concerns with the article. Each review is worth 4 points for a total of 40 points. Reviews must be posted before 2:00pm on the day of the class when the reading is assigned. If there is an existing post on the same article, you should explicity refer to it (agree, disagree, as pointed out, etc.), in your review. This rule applies to any review posted twelve hours or more before your posting.

Discussion Leader (30 points). On one of the weeks, you will be assigned to be a discussion leader to help facilitate the discussion material for that week. This means an extra careful reading of the material, meeting (in-person or via email) with other discussion leaders to divide up the work and decide how to best present the material. You will be graded on your organization, ability to answer questions about the article, and your ability to generate discussion during class. It is expected that at least four of the articles, and perhaps all five, will be discussed each week.

Quizzes (30 points). To make sure that you are staying current with the textbook, three short quizzes will be given during the term on the material in the textbook. Each quiz will consist of 10 very-short answer questions and will take no longer than 20 minutes. Keeping up on the reading will result in perfect scores on these quizzes. Quiz 1 will cover Chap 3-4. Quiz 2 will cover Chap 8 and Chap 9.1 & 9.2. Quiz 3 will cover Chap 9.3-9.5 and Chap 10.

Final Project (100 points). The final project will either a be an extended review paper of a current issue in the general area of spatial reasoning as defined by the course topics or a hands-on demonstration. The final report will consist of 5-10 single-spaced pages (approximately 2500-5000 words) including references. You should follow APA format for any citations within the body of the paper and for typing the reference list at the end of the paper.

An extended review paper should be on single topic and carefully review six or more related articles published during the past five years (2003-2008). Additional articles, including older background material, may also be covered, if necessary.

A hands-on demonstrtation project will center on an implementation of an issue discussed in class. Additional details on possible projects will be posted to courseweb and discussed in class.

Schedule
       
9 Jan 2008 Week 1: Introduction Chapter 3
16 Jan 2008 Week 2: Spatial Cognition Readings-1
23 Jan 2008 Week 3: Models of Geospatial Info Chapter 4
30 Jan 2008 Week 4: Modeling (Quiz 1) Readings-2
6 Feb 2008 Week 5: Interfaces

Chapter 8
13 Feb 2008 Week 6: Ontologies Readings-3
20 Feb 2008 Week 7: Spatial Reasoning Chapter 9
27 Feb 2008   No Class Meeting - iConference  
5 Mar 2008 Week 8: Applications (Quiz 2) Readings-4
12 Mar 2008   Spring Break  
19 Mar 2008 Week 9: Geographic Information Readings-5
26 Mar 2008 Week 10: Spatial Uncertainty Chapter 9, cont.
2 Apr 2008 Week 13: Communication Readings-6
9 Apr 2008 Week 12: Time Chapter 10
16 Apr 2008 Week 14: Future Directions (Quiz 3) Readings-7
23 Apr 2008 Week 15: Final Project Due - no class meeting Earth Day

Last update: January 9, 2008