Temporal G.I.S.

The article, Temporal G.I.S. and Spatio-Temporal Modeling by May Yuan, was a challenging introduction to the field of temporal G.I.S. It was one of the readings which I enjoyed the least so far, since I felt that the author didn’t really do a great job of clearly explaining the concepts or the diagrams provided very well. Perhaps it will become clearer after tomorrows presentation. Through reading the article, it became clear that it is a major challenge to successfully implement temporal aspects into a G.I.S. This was interesting because it reminded me of the article on geovisualization which discussed Minard’s map of Napoleon’s campaign into Russia. There was a strong temporal characteristic to that map, as well as in subsequent versions. Clearly, geographers have been occupied with combining temporal and spatial data for a long time. It is also clear that the problems and issues associated with doing that have not been solved, which is fascinating (although the technical challenges associated with G.I.S.’s are presumably more complex). Time is a very important variable to take into account for any geographic process and to be able to do it successfully incorporate it into a G.I.S would provide a boost to all fields of G.I.Science which rely on temporal analyses (which is a lot).

-Benny

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