space and time

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


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Frans Knibbe
Geodan
President Kennedylaan 1
1079 MB Amsterdam (NL)

T +31 (0)20 - 5711 347
E frans.knibbe@geodan.nl
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