Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in Spatial Information

The Spatial Information Science Research Group of the The University of Melbourne has one research focus on Indeterminacy and uncertainty in spatial information:

Indeterminacy is an unavoidable feature of spatial information. Computing with spatial information in the presence of different types of indeterminacy, such as vagueness, granularity, and inaccuracy, requires specialized theories and techniques

Geographic information science, there are several recent works devoted to concepts related to spatial vagueness and spatial uncertainty including:

Pang A. Visualizing uncertainty in geo-spatial data. In: Workshop on the Intersections between Geospatial Information andInformation Technology, prepared for the National Academies committee of the Computer Science andTelecomm unications Board, 2001.

This paper focuses on how computer graphics and visualization can help users access and understand the increasing volume of geo-spatial data. In particular, this paper highlights some of the visualization challenges in visualizing uncertainty associated with geo-spatial data. Uncertainty comes in a variety of forms and representations, and require different techniques for presentation together with the underlying data. In general, treating the uncertainty values as additional variables of a multivariate data set is not always the best approach. We present some possible approaches and further challenges using two illustrative application domains.

Kulik, L. Spatial vagueness and second-order vagueness. Spatial Cognition and Computation 3, 2 (2003), 157-183.

Most modern geographic information systems model the spatial extensions of geographic objects as sharp regions that have a unique boundary. A sharp region enable a clear distinction between which points belongs to the objects region and which do not. However, almost every natural object has a vague boundary.

Relation to my thesis: Spatial uncertainty in location awareness seems the most obvious area I should target. Geography information sciences has techniques to make us apprehend the physical space. Intelligible context-aware systems should probably support similar techniques to make us grasp the fusion of the virtual with the physical.