Identifying Geographic Events and Processes in Spatio-temporal Data

This paper presents an approach to identifying geographic events and processes in temporal series of topographic data. This approach is based on a novel ontological framework which encompasses coherent representations of time, space, events, processes and the geographic features which are said to participate in events and processes. The novelty of this model lies in several characteristics, which include: (i) it comprises a flexible method of representing attributed spatial-temporal data; (ii) it provides a mechanism for grounding the ontology upon the data; (iii) it takes into account how the phenomenon of temporal vagueness can affect the representation of geographic processes; (iv) its concepts are defined in a level of detail which enables reasoning.