Tutorial: Utility of Logic and Formal Methods for the GIScientist
Ontology, semantics, logic - these words denote big and complex subjects
which in recent years have become intertwined with the practice of
GIScience. For the new GIScience researcher the prospect of getting a
handle on these subjects can seem very daunting, especially if he or she
lacks a theoretical computer science or philosophical background.
The aim of this workshop is to alleviate some of the misconceptions and
fear that all too frequently accompany the application of formal methods
in a interdisciplinary subject such as GIScience. To this end, the
workshop will have three primary learning objectives:
- To understand the technical concepts of some key papers that employ formal methods, and thus appreciate better the ideas that these papers try to convey.
- To be able to criticise papers that employ formal methods, in particularly, to answer the question, is this paper actually useful, or does the formalism just obfuscate a weak idea?
- To feel confident in employing formal methods in your own work.
The workshop will set about achieving these objectives by covering (a) a history of how formal methods have become involved in GIScience; (b) a tutorial for using the language of First-Order Predicate Calculus as a 'specification language' - that is, to use it to make our ideas clear; and (c) the central concepts of some key papers that employ formal methods.
