An attempt at modelling geographical information with the Denotator system
MSc thesis by Urs-Jakob Rüetschi, supervised by Robert Weibel and Guerino Mazzola, Department of Geography, University of Zürich, September 2001.
Information has become a major resource today. Much of the information on which we base our decisions are structured and interrelated in complex ways. This is especially true of information in conjunction with the topics of contemporary geography.
The subject of this thesis is to look at a formal modelling tool, called the Denotator system. Originally motivated by research in musicology but with universality in mind, it turned out to be well suited for information modelling in a geographical context, as is shown in the text.
Preface
Abstract
Chapter 1 / Introduction
Chapter 2 / The World of Forms and Denotators
Chapter 3 / Models and Modelling
Chapter 4 / Spatial Information Modelling
Chapter 5 / Structure in Surveys
Chapter 6 / Metadata and Semantical Issues
Chapter 7 / Comparative Evaluation
Chapter 8 / Conclusions and Outlook
Appendix A / Category Theory and the Denotator System
Appendix B / References
Denotative Geographical Modelling, MSc thesis,
PDF file msc.pdf, 1.2 Mb
You may also see a study about shapefiles (2001-09-12, shapefile.pdf, 135Kb, German) and the slides for the final presentation (aka "Grosses Kolloquium", 2001-11-08, dafolien.pdf, 128Kb, German). Finally, there's a separate and verbose table of contents available.
All the documents above were made using TeX, the typesetting system developed by D.E.Knuth. Most of the figures in the thesis itself were created with John Hobby's MetaPost, a variant of Knuth's Metafont which generates PostScript code from a high-level description of the graphics; here's the MetaPost source for the figures in the thesis: dafig.mp.
The Denotator System was developed by Guerino Mazzola; a thorough presentation can be found in:
Guerino Mazzola, The Topos of Music. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2002.