Regional jurisdiction (states, provinces, counties, etc.) is a crucial part of the governance of ... more Regional jurisdiction (states, provinces, counties, etc.) is a crucial part of the governance of a country, and thus one would assume that great care is given to developing an optimal set of jurisdictional boundaries. However, the geometric precision of the boundaries of the western United States seems to defy the logic of the region’s human and physical geography, suggesting that other forces have played a role in the production of political space in the West at pivotal times in its history. In particular, the 36 th Congress (1859-61) changed the map of the West considerably just before the beginning of the Civil War, just when the politics of slavery was at its height. Congressional bills, debates, and votes show that slavery did have a strong influence on the creation of new states and territories, but western geography was also very important. In particular, bills were generally introduced to the 36 th Congress at the request of settlers, with boundaries that were geographically...
This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accept... more This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact scholarsarchive@byu.edu.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to in this chapter as the LDS Chur... more The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to in this chapter as the LDS Church or simply the Church) has grown from its modest beginning in 1830 of 6 members in New York State to over 16 million members globally in 2020. Although currently there are Latter-day Saint congregations in at least 187 nations and territories, this significant growth has not been evenly distributed over time and place. The LDS Church proclaims that it has been given a divine mandate to spread its beliefs “throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.” Consequently, missionary outreach—as described in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-52616-0_2—has been a top organizational priority, both domestically and internationally, since the Church’s founding.
Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, compr... more Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, comprise a crucial but largely unrecognized component of the core ontology of geographic information. Although masses have been rarely acknowledged in GIScience, they appear in geographic discourse just as often as objects. A concise but consistent formal definition of a geographic mass particular, which distinguishes a mass from an object, can be applied to any endurant phenomena, enabling a richer understanding of the geographic milieu, and more informed decision making during modeling and analysis processes. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Computing methodologies → Ontology engineering; Computing methodologies → Spatial and physical reasoning
From the Publisher: GIS Online is a comprehensive guide for businesses, government agencies, nonp... more From the Publisher: GIS Online is a comprehensive guide for businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and individuals who want to build a Web site based on GIS and mapping technology, or who simply want to include maps on their sites. The book describes the concepts of distributed geographic information (DGI), the integration of GIS and maps with the Internet, and data sharing, and provides guidance through the planning, development, and maintenance of an effective site.
Conference on Spatial Information Theory 2019 Proceedings, 2019
Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, compr... more Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, comprise a crucial but largely unrecognized component of the core ontology of geographic information. Although masses have been rarely acknowledged in GIScience, they appear in geographic discourse just as often as objects. A concise but consistent formal definition of a geographic mass particular, which distinguishes a mass from an object, can be applied to any endurant phenomena, enabling a richer understanding of the geographic milieu, and more informed decision making during modeling and analysis processes.
International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing
Historical place databases can be an invaluable tool for capturing the rich meaning of past place... more Historical place databases can be an invaluable tool for capturing the rich meaning of past places. However, this richness presents obstacles to success: the daunting need to simultaneously represent complex information such as temporal change, uncertainty, relationships, and thorough sourcing has been an obstacle to historical GIS in the past. The Qualified Assertion Model developed in this paper can represent a variety of historical complexities using a single, simple, flexible data model based on a) documenting assertions of the past world rather than claiming to know the exact truth, and b) qualifying the scope, provenance, quality, and syntactics of those assertions. This model was successfully implemented in a production-strength historical gazetteer of religious congregations, demonstrating its effectiveness and some challenges.
While the presence of uncertainty in the geometric and attribute aspects of geographic informatio... more While the presence of uncertainty in the geometric and attribute aspects of geographic information is well known, it is also present in temporal information. In spatiotemporal GIS databases and other formal representations, uncertainty in all three aspects of geography (space, time, and theme) must often be modeled, but a good data model must first be based on a sound theoretical
Geographic information systems have great potential as a tool for studying and teaching
historica... more Geographic information systems have great potential as a tool for studying and teaching historical geography. However, using traditional GIS data models, even spatio-temporal forms, has been difficult due to the prevalence of uncertainty—both ambiguity and fuzziness—in source information concerning space, time, and theme. Explicitly uncertain assertions of a geo-historical datum can be modeled as an Evidentiary Set, a hybrid of a fuzzy set with probability and Dempster- Shafer evidence theory. This set formalism is designed to represent continuous and discrete value ambiguity (e.g., “about 10”), and fuzzy membership (e.g., “somewhat Central European”), including ambiguous membership and other fuzzy-ambiguous combinations. The formal set structure can be stored in GIS by representing continuous variation with a patch model, producing logical models for object-oriented and relational GIS databases. The relational implementation was tested in two GIS databases focused on human historical geography, showing the potential for the model to represent explicit datum-level uncertainty in a wide variety of GIS applications.
Regional jurisdiction (states, provinces, counties, etc.) is a crucial part of the governance of ... more Regional jurisdiction (states, provinces, counties, etc.) is a crucial part of the governance of a country, and thus one would assume that great care is given to developing an optimal set of jurisdictional boundaries. However, the geometric precision of the boundaries of the western United States seems to defy the logic of the region’s human and physical geography, suggesting that other forces have played a role in the production of political space in the West at pivotal times in its history. In particular, the 36 th Congress (1859-61) changed the map of the West considerably just before the beginning of the Civil War, just when the politics of slavery was at its height. Congressional bills, debates, and votes show that slavery did have a strong influence on the creation of new states and territories, but western geography was also very important. In particular, bills were generally introduced to the 36 th Congress at the request of settlers, with boundaries that were geographically...
This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accept... more This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact scholarsarchive@byu.edu.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to in this chapter as the LDS Chur... more The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to in this chapter as the LDS Church or simply the Church) has grown from its modest beginning in 1830 of 6 members in New York State to over 16 million members globally in 2020. Although currently there are Latter-day Saint congregations in at least 187 nations and territories, this significant growth has not been evenly distributed over time and place. The LDS Church proclaims that it has been given a divine mandate to spread its beliefs “throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.” Consequently, missionary outreach—as described in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-52616-0_2—has been a top organizational priority, both domestically and internationally, since the Church’s founding.
Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, compr... more Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, comprise a crucial but largely unrecognized component of the core ontology of geographic information. Although masses have been rarely acknowledged in GIScience, they appear in geographic discourse just as often as objects. A concise but consistent formal definition of a geographic mass particular, which distinguishes a mass from an object, can be applied to any endurant phenomena, enabling a richer understanding of the geographic milieu, and more informed decision making during modeling and analysis processes. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Computing methodologies → Ontology engineering; Computing methodologies → Spatial and physical reasoning
From the Publisher: GIS Online is a comprehensive guide for businesses, government agencies, nonp... more From the Publisher: GIS Online is a comprehensive guide for businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and individuals who want to build a Web site based on GIS and mapping technology, or who simply want to include maps on their sites. The book describes the concepts of distributed geographic information (DGI), the integration of GIS and maps with the Internet, and data sharing, and provides guidance through the planning, development, and maintenance of an effective site.
Conference on Spatial Information Theory 2019 Proceedings, 2019
Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, compr... more Geographic masses, the stuff we deal with that cannot be categorized as geographic objects, comprise a crucial but largely unrecognized component of the core ontology of geographic information. Although masses have been rarely acknowledged in GIScience, they appear in geographic discourse just as often as objects. A concise but consistent formal definition of a geographic mass particular, which distinguishes a mass from an object, can be applied to any endurant phenomena, enabling a richer understanding of the geographic milieu, and more informed decision making during modeling and analysis processes.
International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing
Historical place databases can be an invaluable tool for capturing the rich meaning of past place... more Historical place databases can be an invaluable tool for capturing the rich meaning of past places. However, this richness presents obstacles to success: the daunting need to simultaneously represent complex information such as temporal change, uncertainty, relationships, and thorough sourcing has been an obstacle to historical GIS in the past. The Qualified Assertion Model developed in this paper can represent a variety of historical complexities using a single, simple, flexible data model based on a) documenting assertions of the past world rather than claiming to know the exact truth, and b) qualifying the scope, provenance, quality, and syntactics of those assertions. This model was successfully implemented in a production-strength historical gazetteer of religious congregations, demonstrating its effectiveness and some challenges.
While the presence of uncertainty in the geometric and attribute aspects of geographic informatio... more While the presence of uncertainty in the geometric and attribute aspects of geographic information is well known, it is also present in temporal information. In spatiotemporal GIS databases and other formal representations, uncertainty in all three aspects of geography (space, time, and theme) must often be modeled, but a good data model must first be based on a sound theoretical
Geographic information systems have great potential as a tool for studying and teaching
historica... more Geographic information systems have great potential as a tool for studying and teaching historical geography. However, using traditional GIS data models, even spatio-temporal forms, has been difficult due to the prevalence of uncertainty—both ambiguity and fuzziness—in source information concerning space, time, and theme. Explicitly uncertain assertions of a geo-historical datum can be modeled as an Evidentiary Set, a hybrid of a fuzzy set with probability and Dempster- Shafer evidence theory. This set formalism is designed to represent continuous and discrete value ambiguity (e.g., “about 10”), and fuzzy membership (e.g., “somewhat Central European”), including ambiguous membership and other fuzzy-ambiguous combinations. The formal set structure can be stored in GIS by representing continuous variation with a patch model, producing logical models for object-oriented and relational GIS databases. The relational implementation was tested in two GIS databases focused on human historical geography, showing the potential for the model to represent explicit datum-level uncertainty in a wide variety of GIS applications.
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Papers by Brandon Plewe
historical geography. However, using traditional GIS data models, even spatio-temporal forms,
has been difficult due to the prevalence of uncertainty—both ambiguity and fuzziness—in source
information concerning space, time, and theme. Explicitly uncertain assertions of a geo-historical
datum can be modeled as an Evidentiary Set, a hybrid of a fuzzy set with probability and Dempster-
Shafer evidence theory. This set formalism is designed to represent continuous and discrete value
ambiguity (e.g., “about 10”), and fuzzy membership (e.g., “somewhat Central European”), including
ambiguous membership and other fuzzy-ambiguous combinations. The formal set structure can be
stored in GIS by representing continuous variation with a patch model, producing logical models for
object-oriented and relational GIS databases. The relational implementation was tested in two GIS
databases focused on human historical geography, showing the potential for the model to represent
explicit datum-level uncertainty in a wide variety of GIS applications.
historical geography. However, using traditional GIS data models, even spatio-temporal forms,
has been difficult due to the prevalence of uncertainty—both ambiguity and fuzziness—in source
information concerning space, time, and theme. Explicitly uncertain assertions of a geo-historical
datum can be modeled as an Evidentiary Set, a hybrid of a fuzzy set with probability and Dempster-
Shafer evidence theory. This set formalism is designed to represent continuous and discrete value
ambiguity (e.g., “about 10”), and fuzzy membership (e.g., “somewhat Central European”), including
ambiguous membership and other fuzzy-ambiguous combinations. The formal set structure can be
stored in GIS by representing continuous variation with a patch model, producing logical models for
object-oriented and relational GIS databases. The relational implementation was tested in two GIS
databases focused on human historical geography, showing the potential for the model to represent
explicit datum-level uncertainty in a wide variety of GIS applications.