Temporal reasoning in cadastral systems

A detailed case study was necessary to determine the actual-reasoning structures and requirements in temporal GIS, and to provide the different temporal reasoning powers in cadastral systems, to provide a formal description of the legal and topological reasoning in them.

Abstract

Recently, temporal reasoning is getting more attention in GIS. From 1985 until the present, the number of research groups working on temporal GIS has noticeably increased. Yet, much research must still be done before temporal GIS become available. Information systems have to consider temporal data to answer queries that could not be answered otherwise, such as: Which town had the greatest increase in population last year? We believe that a detailed case study was necessary to determine the actual-reasoning structures and requirements in temporal GIS. Cadastral systems provide us with such an example. A cadastral system must include temporal data to answer queries as: Who owned this house in 1988? The goal of this thesis is to understand the reasoning powers in traditional cadastral systems better. We are studying the process of recording and inferring about rights in traditional cadastral systems to obtain the underlying logic-base. Once we understand how the reasoning is done in such systems, we can formalize their conceptual entities and operations. Temporal reasoning is necessary for knowledge-based cadastral systems that will make assertions and inferences to assist users in making their decisions more easily and reliably. To achieve this goal, we need to gain a clear understanding of the temporal aspects, rules and operations used in the reasoning about cadastral records. The objectives for achieving this goal are (1) to study and analyze the needed expressive power for temporal data in cadastral systems; (2) to identify and formalize the conceptual entities of a cadastral system; (3) to formalize, with a temporal logic, procedures for an intelligent search and to make inferences about temporal events in these systems; and (4) to prove the correctness of the concept by implementing a prototype. The major contribution of this study is to provide the different temporal reasoning powers in cadastral systems, to provide a formal description of the legal and topological reasoning in them, and to provide us with the temporal logic that is necessary for it.