Modeling spatiotemporal information generation

Maintaining knowledge about the provenance of datasets, that is, about how they were obtained, is crucial for their further use. Contrary to what the overused metaphors of ‘data mining’ and ‘big data’ are implying, it is hardly possible to use data in a meaningful way if information about sources and types of conversions is discarded in the process of data gathering. A generative model of spatiotemporal information could not only help automating the description of derivation processes but also assessing the scope of a dataset’s future use by exploring possible transformations. Even though there are technical approaches to document data provenance, models for describing how spatiotemporal data are generated are still missing. To fill this gap, we introduce an algebra that models data generation and describes how datasets are derived, in terms of types of reference systems. We illustrate its versatility by applying it to a number of derivation scenarios, ranging from field aggregation to trajectory generation, and discuss its potential for retrieval, analysis support systems, as well as for assessing the space of meaningful computations.