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From Snapshots to Processes: Dynamic Contact Algebras as a Foundation for Process-Oriented GIS

A mix of human-written and AI-generated textHuman understanding: all partscs.DS — Data Structures and Algorithmscs.LO — Logic in Computer Science

Contributed by John Hessler ↗

Version 1 / Oct 09, 2026 / CC BY 4.0

Abstract

Geographic information science has argued for three decades that representing change requires moving from time-stamped snapshots to events and processes. This ontological shift has not been matched by a formal foundation with the properties a GIS needs: explicit axioms, representation theorems, and decidable reasoning. We propose dynamic mereotopology, in the form of Vakarelov’s dynamic contact algebras (DCAs), as a candidate foundation. DCAs are point-free with respect to both space and time. Regions are histories, primitive relations include space contact, time contact and precedence, moments are recovered as clusters of the time-contact relation, and properties of time correspond to axioms about regions alone. Using Grenon and Smith’s distinction between SNAP (snapshot) and SPAN (process) ontologies, we argue that DCAs originate on the SNAP side, since they are abstracted from a snapshot model, yet their primitives already carry much of what a SPAN ontology requires. We then identify precisely what is still missing for a process-oriented GIS: process and participation primitives, continuity of change, freedom from global simultaneity, identity under splitting and merging, and granularity. We develop a SPAN-first extension. For two of its components we give full proofs: a point-free continuity axiom, shown to express exactly the intended condition in discrete time and in finitely variable dense time, and a set of correspondences showing which axioms of continuous space hold at every finite resolution of discrete data and which emerge only in the limit of refinement. The remaining proposals are stated as conjectures, and the framework is tested against three case studies: a flood, a wildfire, and a pandemic.

Provenance statement

Produced as an extension to authors work on mereotolopolgy as an ontological foundation for geographic information systems.

Tools used

Anthropic
Claude Fable

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Version history

  1. v1Submitted by John HesslerInitial depositCurrentOct 09, 2026