It's about Time, It's about Space

A 1960s TV series theme song began, "It's about time, it's about space...". Some, from Physics to Philosophy, say it's about both, claiming they are each aspects of a single space-time. Computer systems developers need to consider this as they build GIS applications.

Ontology, being the branch of philosophy concerned with describing "what exists", tackles the topics of Space and Time since they are often used to describe things. An Introduction to Ontology[1] devotes a chapter to each. As usual, things are more complicated than our initial intuition expects, and debate continues about different viewpoints. In a nutshell, the following are discussed:

• Space is usually defined in terms of "regions"
• Space is either absolute or relative.
• Space is either something things "are in", or it is synonymous with the thing itself
  i.e. regions only have properties like size and location, versus, a region itself having the property blue if the stuff in it is blue.
• Space is either Euclidean or not (i.e. flat or curved)
• Space is either separate from Time, or parts of the same thing: space-time.

Most programmers today, in the age of Map apps, Geographic Information Systems, and geocoding, take the view that an entity such as a business or address is located at some location. The location ideally could be defined as a collection of regions defined by GPS coordinates. Often, the location is (over)simplified to a single point on a map.

While it is recognized that many problems exist with actual databases of geocoded entities, it is usually assumed that they are in the realm of epistemology rather than ontology. In other words, it is assumed the problem is with "our knowledge" due to inaccuracies in the set of GPS coordinates; not that locations don't actually have a definite set of coordinates.

However, not every entity that takes up space has a well-defined and unchanging mapping to a set of GPS coordinates.  ZIP codes, for example, are not defined in terms of geography but rather as collections of delivery routes. Another example, as shown in the title insurance case study below, is in real estate legal descriptions. In addition to a knowledge problem caused by ambiguous language used in these descriptions, they can also refer to ephemeral landmarks.

While a naive assumption that space is different than time is often made in data model design, entities like ZIP codes and Legal Descriptions require a time dimension to be completely accurate. It turns out that the mapping of zip codes to postal routes changes several times a year.  And landmarks, referred to in property descriptions, can change location and shape over time.

Case Study: TICOR Title Insurance System

OMEX was a startup that was an early pioneer in creating optical disk technology for data storage. It took on a contract to produce a computer system to support TICOR, the largest title insurance company in the U.S.  TICOR itself had the contract to keep backup copies of all the real estate transactions filed with Los Angeles county.  As a part of archiving copies of the documents, it was free to use the information in them, and hence support its business of providing title insurance.

The computer system was to replace using microfilm photos of the documents with optical disk storage of the images.  It would link these images with a structured database of information related to each property. One of the goals of the database was to enable answering basic questions about property locations.

The programmers, having a naive notion of how property boundaries were defined, were surprised to see that a common method is “metes and bounds” which uses plain english descriptions using landmarks. E.G. "beginning with a corner at the intersection of two stone walls near an apple tree on the north side of Muddy Creek road one mile above the junction of Muddy and Indian Creeks, north for 150 rods to the end of the stone wall bordering the road, then northwest along a line to a large standing rock on the corner of the property now or formerly belonging to John Smith, thence west 150 rods to the corner of a barn near a large oak tree, thence south to Muddy Creek road, thence down the side of the creek road to the starting point."

As can be seen, it would be difficult to translate this into a collection of GPS coordinates. But even if you did, you would not be done with the problem.  Like ZIP codes that change over time, the location and shape of creeks, rivers, etc change over time. Lest you think this is a merely theoretical problem, for centuries, States have sued each other over land ownership due to border rivers migrating over time.

Ultimately, the computer system wound up just using unstructured text fields to contain the legal description rather than the more ambitious GIS database they had originally promised.

[1] An Introduction to Ontology, Nikk Effingham, Polity Press, 2013

[2] A River Runs Thru It, How the States Got Their Shapes, History Channel, 2011