地理时间、空间和专题属性是地理信息的三个基本元素或三个基本维度。时态地理信息系统是地理信息系统的一个前沿研究方向。然而,现有时态地理信息系统发展的时空数据模型(数据结构化、推理或分析模型)主要基于时空笛卡尔积和事件认知理论,缺乏完整的时空语义基础。时空笛卡尔积将时间和空间看作彼此独立、互不相关的两个基本几何维度,时间和空间从形式上简单组合,时空数据建模形式化为几何(欧氏、仿射、透射、拓扑几何)计算。事件认知理论通过对事件的直观理解问接地模拟时空语义,状态差异被隐喻为事件,泛化的事件模拟一定程度上模糊了时空语义。借助地理时空认知与计算的研究经验,将地理信息的时空语义系统化为地理时空位置-运动-动力三个渐进层次,并进行广义阐述。地理时空位置-运动-动力彼此解译构成内蕴相对完整的时空语义。整体地理时空语义是地理时空数据结构化组织、时空推理与分析、时空视觉与语言表达等地理时空计算技术的重要概念基础,它潜在地可作为各种现存时空数据模型的一个归类框架。
Time, space, and thematics are three elements of geographical information. In geoinformatics, temporal geographical information system has been a frontier research issue over the past decades. However, data models employed by the current temporal geographical information systems are mainly based on space-time Cartesian product and general events modeling theories. Less spati-temporal semantics are modeled in these two theories. In space-time Cartesian product, space and time are two independent dimensions orthogonally, space and time are geometrically put together. Following that, spatio-temporal data modeling is reduced to purely geometrical computation in a Euclidean, affine, projective, or topological sense. In general events modeling, the difference of two status is metaphored as an event. The general events modeling has fuzzed spatio-temporal semantic modeling. In this paper, we have presented an integrated spatio-temporal semantics of geographical position, motion, and dynamics. Furthermore, geographical position, motion, and dynamics are formulated in a broad sense. Potentially, the proposed spatio-temporal semantics can be used to reshape all existing spatio-temporal data models, and be a conceptual foundation of spatio-temporal data structuralization and analysis, spatio-temporal visual and verbal expression.