Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 21
Real-Time Space-Time Integration in GIScience
and Geography
Douglas Richardson
Have you also learned that secret from the river ::: that the river
is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth,
at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in
the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for
it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (1951) )
21.1
Real-Time Space-Time Integration
Time is a multi-faceted concept, with deeply personal and subjective meanings as
well as formally constructed but still arbitrary meanings, and ontologies for time
in GIScience can be as complex as they are for space in Geography. However, at
its simplest and in the practice of Geographic Information Science research, it is
still useful to think about space-time research challenges in three basic temporal
domains: (1) past time - documenting and interpreting historical events, places,
and processes; (2) future time - modeling, simulating, or projecting future spatial
scenarios; and (3) real-time -understanding and interacting with events, people,
places, and spatial processes as they are emerging and mutually evolving in a
dynamic and mobile world.
While of course interrelated, each of these simple categories has its own
special set of challenges in gathering, understanding, and representing space-
time integrated data. Historical time and geographic data, especially from the
more distant past, is highly constrained by pre-existing and frequently indefinite
or inconsistent time and space categories of bygone eras. Historical GIS cannot
This chapter has been reprinted with the permission of the Association of American Geographers
and Taylor & Francis, LLC. Originally published: Douglas B. Richardson (2013) Real-Time
Space-Time Integration in GIScience and Geography , Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 103:5, 1062-1071.
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