[GeoJSON] Time and GeoJSON, redux

Sean Gillies sean.gillies at gmail.com
Tue Apr 1 09:02:00 PDT 2014


Dear Karl,

I worked on a little historical gazetteer project for a while and continue
to be very interested in time. While I'm not in favor of making time part
of the GeoJSON core, I think it would be a cool application for GeoJSON-LD.

I don't agree that CIDOC-CRM or Topotime white papers are good starting
points for this discussion. Rather, I think the right starting points are:

  1. The frequently asked question "how do I represent time series and/or
GPX data in GeoJSON?"
  2. How can we extend GeoJSON so that "story map" applications (such as
http://storymap.knightlab.com/) are simple to develop and so that this kind
of data can benefit from the ecosystem around GeoJSON (Leaflet, GitHub
support, etc.

Fuzzy dates and historical calender system bugs complicate the latter,
certainly, and I feel that GeoJSON should avoid fuzzy dates as it avoids
fuzzy locations. Also, the choice of a standard temporal reference system
will be interesting.



On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Karl Grossner <karlg at stanford.edu> wrote:

> At least three efforts at developing standard representations of
> explicitly temporal objects have begun and are in an early stage of
> development: Topotime [1], the CRMgeo extension to CIDOC-CRM [2], and the
> nascent PeriodO [3]. All of these view temporal objects as inherently
> spatial and vice-versa. Gazetteer-related projects including Pelagios 3
> [4], which is developing an "index of toponyms attested," will have some
> standardized form of representing attested temporal dimensions of a toponym
> and/or its referrent feature.
>
> GeoJSON is an important standard for representing geographic features, but
> the specification does not address temporality explicitly. My view is that
> it should, going forward. At present, temporal attributes of a feature can
> be added as a property, but isn't the temporal extent of a feature co-equal
> as a descriptor with its spatial extent? Software can be written (and is)
> to parse values from ad hoc "properties" : { ... }, but will it be useful
> to elevate temporal description to the level of "geometry" in the standard?
>
> As a co-developer of Topotime, engaged in collaborative discussions with
> some of the other projects mentioned here, I'd like to start a discussion
> here of how such spatial-temporal representations can or should relate to
> GeoJSON, and the emerging GeoJSON-LD. I've written a few further thoughts
> about it on a blog post [5].
>
> Thoughts?
>
> [1] http://dh.stanford.edu/topotime
> [2] http://www.cidoc-crm.org/docs/Technical%20Report435-CRMgeo.pdf
> [3] http://caa2014.sciencesconf.org/browse/author?authorid=233410
> [4] http://pelagios-project.blogspot.com/
> [5]
> http://kgeographer.com/wp/joining-space-and-time-in-geographic-features/
>
> +++++
> Karl Grossner
> karlg at stanford.edu
>
>
>
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>
>


-- 
Sean Gillies
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