Re: space and time

Hello Frans,

Although I have long thought this was an important subject, I had no idea of the global urgency ... beer you say ?  It is a holiday weekend in the US and I will be doing Basic Research, but Tuesday bright and early ...

In all seriousness, the RDF Framework is a bit too flexible to handle low frequency visualizations.  OTOH, Big Data and funding concerns have a natural affinity for data on the real-time "News Cycle".  This is not necessarily the highest priority of the "little guys" and Big (geophysical) Science - for slightly different reasons.  Cyberspace is not a seasonal business but many Locations and "little guys" are.  Big Science has big useful concepts and piles of data, but rely on data aggregators to keep it "News", discoverable, and interesting. An easy (mathematical) coordinate system change between "seasons" would benefit both.  It is remarkably easy much more so than GIS Systems.

For example, http://www.rustprivacy.org/2014/balance/gts/sunshineBySeason.jpg

The graph shows the minutes of sunlight per day for Boulder Colorado (I used NOAA's lo-res spreadsheet).  The X coordinate is 100%-500% (2012-2015) so 300%-400% is 2014.  The X coordinate is in 12 equal monthly intervals (reports).  The two sine waves Winter (New Year's=100%) and Summer (Midyear=100%) are seasonal arcs.  The sunshine arc itself is asymetric and if you look carefully, you will notice that there is not a single first of the month with 12 hours (720 minutes) of sunlight.  We paid good money for this data!!!!  What's the problem ???? Epic Fail. :-)

Government Agencies can use this approach too. Governments have only one "growing season" meaning funding season.

In the US it might really help.  Short version: Taxes paid in Spring, Politicians scream at each other all Summer, Fiscal Year starts 10/1.  Politicians fund NASA to fix the sun this year, are real mad at NASA next summer when the sun does it again.

--Gannon
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 5/23/14, Frans Knibbe | Geodan <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> wrote:

 Subject: space and time
 To: "public-locadd@w3.org Mailing list" <public-locadd@w3.org>
 Date: Friday, May 23, 2014, 5:39 AM
   
     Hello,
     When reading and
       talking about geographical Linked Data I sometimes
 come across the
       term 'spatiotemporal data', meaning that data
 are dependent on
       both
       space and time. I wonder if temporal aspects of data
 should be
       considered when we are thinking about how to express
 location data
       in
       the Semantic Web. 
     I understand that for
       many spatial data the temporal aspects are really
 important, but I
       think temporal aspects could be equally important to
 data about
       postage stamps or model trains or beer, or whichever
 other topics
       one
       can have data about. In all cases, I don't think
 it is necessary
       to
       think of special ways of expressing the time dimension
 in the
       data.
       It seems to me that general vocabularies and/or data
 types for
       expressing time should suffice. In other words, I
 think that
       time and space are orthogonal subjects and that
 vocabularies about
       space (location) can be kept separate from
 vocabularies about time
       (For normal everyday data, that is. Cosmological data
 are another
       matter).
 
     
     What do you think
       about this? 
 
     
     Regards,
 
       Frans
 
     
     
 
     
     
     
     
 
 
     
         
         Frans Knibbe
 
         Geodan
 
         President Kennedylaan 1
 
         1079 MB Amsterdam (NL)
 
         
 
         T +31 (0)20 - 5711 347
 
         E frans.knibbe@geodan.nl
 
         www.geodan.nl | disclaimer

Received on Friday, 23 May 2014 21:00:14 UTC