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.

The general problem addressed in this book is a large and important one: how to usefully deal with huge storehouses of complex information about real-world situations. Every one of the major modes of interacting with such storehouses – querying, data mining, data analysis – is addressed by current technologies only in very limited and unsatisfactory ways. The impact of a solution to this problem would be huge and pervasive, as the domains of human pursuit to which such storehouses are acutely relevant is numerous and rapidly growing. Finally, we give a more detailed treatment of one potential solution with this class, based on our prior work with the Probabilistic Logic Networks (PLN) formalism. We show how PLN can be used to carry out realworld reasoning, by means of a number of practical examples of reasoning regarding human activities inreal-world situations.

Our homes anticipate when we want to wake up. Our computers predict what music we want to buy. Our cars adapt to the way we drive. In today’s world, even washing machines, rice cookers and toys have the capability of autonomous decision-making. As we grow accustomed to computing power embedded in our surroundings, it becomes clear that these ‘smart environments’, with a number of devices controlled by a coordinating system capable of ‘ambient intelligence’, will play an ever larger role in our lives. This handbook provides readers with comprehensive, up-to-date coverage in what is a key technological field. . Systematically dealing with each aspect of ambient intelligence and smart environments, the text covers everything, from visual information capture and human/computer interaction to multi-agent systems, network use of sensor data, and building more rationality into artificial systems. The book also details a wide range of applications, examines case studies of recent major projects from around the world, and analyzes both the likely impact of the technology on our lives, and its ethical implications. With a wide variety of separate disciplines all conducting research relevant to this field, this handbook encourages collaboration between disparate researchers by setting out the fundamental concepts from each area that are relevant to ambient intelligence and smart environments, providing a fertile soil in which ground-breaking new work candevelop.

Qualitative reasoning about space and time - a reasoning at the human level - promises to become a fundamental aspect of future systems that will accompany us in daily activity. The aim of Spatial and Temporal Reasoning is to give a picture of current research in this area focusing on both representational and computational issues. The picture emphasizes some major lines of development in this multifaceted, constantly growing area. The material in the book also shows some common ground and a novel combination of spatial and temporal aspects of qualitative reasoning. Part I presents the overall scene. The chapter by Laure Vieu is on the state of the art in spatial representation and reasoning, and that by Alfonso Gerevini gives a similar survey on research in temporal reasoning. The specific contributions to these areas are then grouped in the two main parts. In Part II, Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi examine the ontological status of spatial entities; Anthony Cohn, Brandon Bennett, John Gooday, and Nicholas Gotts present a detailed theory of reasoning with qualitative relations about regions; Andrew Frank discusses the spatial needs of geographical information systems; and Annette Herskovits focuses on the linguistic expression of spatial relations. In Part III, James Allen and George Ferguson describe an interval temporal logic for the representation of actions and events; Drew McDermott presents an efficient way of predicting the outcome of plan execution; and Erik Sandewall introduces a semantics based on transitions for assessing theories of action and change. In Part IV, Antony Galton's chapter stands clearly between the two areas of space and time and outlines the main coordinates of an integrated approach.

Spatio-Temporal Databases explores recent trends in flexible querying and reasoning about time- and space-related information in databases. It shows how flexible querying enhances standard querying expressiveness in many different ways, with the aim of facilitating extraction of relevant data and information. Flexible spatial and temporal reasoning denotes qualitative reasoning about dynamic changes in the spatial domain, characterized by imprecision or uncertainty (or both). Many of the contributions focus on GIS, while some others are more general, or focus on related application fields, presenting theoretical viewpoints and techniques that are inspiring or can be adapted for GIS. The first part bundles the contributions on advances at the theoretical level, also discussing examples and opening further perspectives. The second part presents contributions on well-developed applications. The authors explain how to handle imprecision and uncertainty, demonstrating how advanced techniques can help to solve diverse problems related to GIS.

This book contains twenty-eight papers by participants in the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on "Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space," held in Las Navas del Maxques, Spain, July 8-20, 1990. The NATO ASI marked a stage in a two-year research project at the U. S. National Center for Geographic Infonnation and Analysis (NCOIA). In 1987, the U. S. National Science Foundation issued a solicitation for proposals to establish the NCGIA-and one element of that solicitation was a call for research on a "fundamental theory of spatial relations". We felt that such a fundamental theory could be searched for in mathematics (geometry, topology) or in cognitive science, but that a simultaneous search in these two seemingly disparate research areas might produce novel results. Thus, as part of the NCGIA proposal from a consortium consisting of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Maine, we proposed that the second major Research Initiative (two year, multidisciplinary research project) of the NCOIA would address these issues, and would be called "Languages of Spatial Relations" The grant to establish the NCOIA was awarded to our consortium late in 1988.

Articles refer to teaching at various different levels from kindergarten to graduate school, with sections on teaching: geologic time, space, complex systems, and field-work. Each section includes an introduction, a thematic paper, and commentaries.