GIScience 2006 Workshop on

The Cognitive Approach
to Modeling Environments (CAME)

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

Motivation and Aim | Schedule | Topics and Questions | Organization | Contact

Spatial characteristics of an environment determine human behavior in and conceptualization of this environment. The workshop addresses how this interaction between environment and human behavior can be adequately represented and captured in (computational) models of space.

Motivation and Aim

There is a consensus that the characteristics of an environment influence human performance in spatial tasks. For an extreme example, compare localization in a maze relative to its exit with localization in open space with respect to a nearby landmark.

From a cognitive perspective, Montello (1993) provides a general classification of environments according to their relation to the size of the human body and states consequences for human perception and conception of these spaces. Other research identified spatial factors that influence human performance and ability in spatial (navigation) tasks (e.g., Weismann, 1981; Gärling, 1986).

In architecture, Lynch (1960) classified elements in an urban environment that shape people's "image of a city". In urban planning, Space Syntax (Hillier & Hanson, 1984) provides a set of representations that reflect and predict social behavior in urban areas. While clearly sociologically motivated, the Space Syntax community recently started to take cognitive considerations into account (e.g., Zimrig & Conroy Dalton, 2003). Finally, the modality of locomotion (on foot, by car, etc.) poses additional constraints for cognitively meaningful models of space.

In contrast, today's location-based services or mobile systems simply distinguish indoor and outdoor space without any further consideration of other spatial factors. Many other environmental characteristics, like an environment's general structure or configurations of features that may single out places, are not taken into account in computational models for spatial assistance.

Consequently, there is a gap between the widely deployed models of space and what research in cognitive science and related fields identified as being important for human interaction with and conceptualization of space. Bridging this gap must be a concern for GIScience and is the motivation for this workshop.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on the incorporation of environmental characteristics into models of space, thereby building on findings from cognitive psychology and related fields. It will stimulate and foster discussion on the topic and identify future research questions.

References
Gärling, T., Lindberg, E., & Mäntylä, T. (1983), Orientation in buildings: Effects of familiarity, visual access, and orientation aids. Journal of Applied Psychology 68(1):177-186.
Hillier, B. & Hanson, J. (1984), The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, K. (1960), The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Montello, D. R. (1993), Scale and multiple psychologies of space. In A.U. Frank & I. Campari (eds.), Spatial Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS (pp. 312-321). Berlin: Springer.
Weisman, J. (1981), Evaluating architectural legibility: Way-finding in the built environment. Environment and Behavior 13(2):189-204.
Zimrig, C. & Conroy Dalton, R. (2003), Linking objective measures of space to cognition and action. Environment and Behavior 35(1):3-16.

Schedule

Reader with workshop contributions
 
Updated version of Carsten Kessler's contribution

Topics and Questions

Environmental characteristics:

• What are the environmental characteristics we need to address?
• How can we classify them (taxonomies, ontologies)?
• Do the "traditional" GIS models (vector, raster, networks) suffice to capture the essence of those characteristics? Or should we develop specific models from scratch?

Modeling environmental characteristics:

• How do we model specific types of environments (indoor/outdoor, vista/environmental/geographical, loosely/fully structured)?
• Can we identify common elements and structures in these models?
• How can we identify salient environmental characteristics that influence human behavior (structural/functional complexity, landmarks, symmetries)?

Applications in communication and design:

• How can we identify and emphasize the information most relevant for a particular environment?
• How can real-world applications, like LBS, benefit?
• How can we exploit our theoretical models when designing new environments like a building or a neighborhood?

Organization

This workshop is one in a series of workshops that complement the GIScience 2006 conference in Münster, Germany (September 20-23). It comprises presentations of the accepted papers, followed by discussions in small groups with report-back to the plenum.

Last updated: 2006-07-21