Granularity in Reference to Spatio-Temporal Location and Relations

May 2002

Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2002)

Volume

Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2002)

All Papers

This paper discusses the role of granularity in judgments about spatio-temporal location and relations. It distinguishes three aspects of spatio-temporal granularity: the granularity with which location is approximated, the granularity which arises as a function of the degree to which we recognize or trace over changes of location, and granularity as it affects our apprehension of spatio-temporal relations. The paper shows that there is a hierarchical structure of spatio-temporal granularity that is closely related the hierarchical structure of of places in our environment and to the hierarchical structure of temporal orders such as embodied in calendars and agendas.