Spatially Enabling 'Place' Information

Abstract

Many attempts to embed the concept of ‘place ’ into current location-based technologies and spatial data infrastructures have failed spectacularly. Resolving places to single georeferenced points has been identified as a major factor. The prevailing hypothesis is that more complex georeferenced descriptions of places will resolve the problem. This paper refutes this hypothesis. It challenges it from five perspectives including issues related to: determining positional accuracy, defining vague and dynamic places, administering natural places with uncertain boundaries, supporting vanity and vernacular places, and representing the salience of places. These five perspectives demonstrate that while more complex modeling of place is necessary, it is only part of the solution. Successful spatial enablement of place will require other essential issues to be addressed including: combining absolute, relative, and visual accuracy definitions of place, using emerging sources of data (e.g. crowd-sourced) to develop dynamic descriptions of places, determining how to capture ‘places ’ from remotely sensed data, incorporating vanity and vernacular places into spatial data infrastructures, and embedding measures of the salience of place into spatial data infrastructures. These findings are synthesized into a future research agenda in spatial data infrastructures, or spatial information science in general.

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