| |  | Brodaric, Boyan | Experiments to Examine the Situated Nature of Geoscientific Concepts read moreAbstract: Ontologies are being developed in many geoscientific domains. They are typically populated with two types of concepts: upper-level concepts that apply across many or all domains, and domain concepts that apply only within a specific domain. Previous work has refined this distinction by identifying a particular type of domain concept, called a situated concept, which is dependent on specific processes (natural, social, scientific, or possibly machine) for its meaning and is instantiated amongst entities within a specific geographical and historical context. In this paper we present new support for situated geoscientific concepts, building on our previous research that argues for the importance of situations in the development and use of concepts related to geoscientific field mapping. The new results are obtained by using statistical techniques to further analyze three geologists' field data over time, to better test the hypothesis that the concepts developed by the geologists to classify objects on the map are in fact situated. The field data are compared to each other, and to the concepts developed by the team. Differences found between and within individuals' data for three map concepts provide strong support for the idea that the concepts are variably influenced by data, theory, and natural and human situations. From this increased corroboration of situated concepts we suggest two implications for domain ontologies: (1) a delineation between situated domain concepts and non-situated domain concepts; and (2) recognition that representation of reliable meaning involves the capture of historical and geographical context for situated concepts.
 This article is not yet tagged | 2007 |
| | | Gahegan, Mark | Computational and Visual Support for Geographical Knowledge Construction: Filling in the gaps between exploration and explanation read moreAbstract: Although many different types of data mining tools have been developed for
geographic analysis, the broader perspective of geographic knowledge
discovery?the stages required and their computational support?have been
largely overlooked. This paper describes the process of knowledge construction
as a number of inter-related activities and the support of these activities in an
integrated visual and computational environment, GeoVISTA Studio. Results are
presented showing examples of each stage in the knowledge construction process
and a summary of the inter-relationships between visualization, computation,
representation and reasoning is provided. This article is not yet tagged | 2002 |
| | | Brodaric, Boyan | Learning geoscience categories in situ: Implications for geographic knowledge representation read moreAbstract: This paper explores the development of categories shared in the field logging of a region by a team of geologists. Visualization, neural networks and spatial statistical tools are employed to gain insight into the complex space of attributes observed, and into the categories developed. Background material and a discussion of results examines the findings in the light of research into category development, and specifically how categories are thought to be formed and modified as part of the (geo)scientific process and the situations encountered. Results show that (1) category discrepancy exists between individuals; (2) category development or revision is evident among individuals; and (3) that some categories do not seem to be totally defined by observed data alone. The results imply that contextual factors should also be considered when adopting ontological approaches to information representation. This article is not yet tagged | 2001 |
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