Naive Geography

Max J. Egenhofer and David M. Mark

(COSIT'95: Conference on Spatial Information Theory, Semmering, Austria)

• 1Introduction
• 2Naive Physics
• 3Naive Geography: the Notion
  • 3.1The Essence of Naive Geography: Geographic Space
  • 3.2Naive Geography for GIS Design
  • 3.3What Naive Geography is Not
  • 3.4Naive Geography and Related Disciplines
• 4Towards the Development of Naive Geography
• 5Some Elements of Naive Geography
  • 5.1Naive Geographic Space is Two-Dimensional
  • 5.2The Earth is Flat
  • 5.3Maps are More Real Than Experience
  • 5.4Geographic Entities are Ontologically Different from Enlarged Table-Top Objects
  • 5.5Geographic Space and Time are Tightly Coupled
  • 5.6Geographic Information is Frequently Incomplete
  • 5.7People use Multiple Conceptualizations of Geographic Space
  • 5.8Geographic Space has Multiple Levels of Detail
  • 5.9Boundaries are Sometimes Entities, Sometimes Not
  • 5.10Topology Matters, Metric Refines
  • 5.11People have Biases Toward North-South and East-West Directions
  • 5.12Distances are Asymmetric
  • 5.13Distance Inferences are Local, Not Global
  • 5.14Distances Don't Add Up Easily
• 6Conclusions
• 7Acknowledgments
• 8References