It will seem counter-intuitive to many for a blog called "Computing Place" to launch with a discussion of events and other temporal things. Therein lies the motivation! I am interested in all kinds of computational models of place, but seek to investigate, model and promote the notion that places may be best described in terms of what happens (and happened) there.
Others have suggested this in various ways. British geographer Doreen Massey described place poetically as "a meeting up of histories" in For Space (2005). Historian and political scientist William Sewell, Jr. observed that societal structure is “a product of the events through which it has passed,” (Logics of History, 2005). Viewed that way, thorough digital descriptions and analyses of societies-in-places require good models of events as spatial things.
Towards that end, I recently developed an event-centered spatial history ontology (the SHO) as part of my recent doctoral studies. Readable summaries and usable elements of that work will appear in this space, along with related explorations as I try to develop useful data models and applications for the goal my dissertation title describes: Representing Historical Knowledge in Geographic Information Systems.
The next phase of documenting my efforts along those lines and engaging with others about them (and theirs) begins with this blog. The usual scholarly publication channels will be pursued as well -- when there's the time!
To be continued...
