Temporal reasoning using tesseral addressing: towards an intelligent environmental impact assessment system

Abstract

A temporal reasoning system is described which uses a tesseral addressing referencing system. The tesseral addressing techniques used are directly compatible with raster based Geographic Informatiori Systems (GIS) and by extension vector based GIS. As a result the temporal reasoning mechanism can be integrated into GIS systems and provide a temporal reasoning capability for such systems. Although the target application of the system described is the production of Environmental Impact Assessment reports it is considered that the advantages offered have a much wider field of application. The temporal reasoning approach advocated has similarities with Kowalski's event calculus in that the principal entities under consideration are temporally displaced events which have temporal attributes associated with them. Events are considered to be instantaneous; non-instantaneous events are described in terms of instantaneous start and end events. The temporal attributes which can be associated with events comprise sets of one or more ranges. Ranges may define a time period during which an event can be said to occur, in which case they are defined in terms of their earliest and latest times (tesseral address), or they may be used to allocate an absolute reference to an event, i.e. a range comprising a single tesseral address. Experiments to date have indicated that the system provides an excellent foundation on which to base further, multi-dimensional reasoning, work.