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Structuring space with image schemata: Wayfinding in airports as a case study

  • Stucturing of Space
  • Conference paper
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Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS (COSIT 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1329))

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Abstract

Wayfinding is a basic activity people do throughout their entire lives as they navigate from one place to another. In order to create different spaces in such a way that they facilitate people's wayfinding it is necessary to integrate principles of human spatial cognition into the design process. This paper presents a methodology to structure space based on experiental patterns, called image schemata. It integrates cognitive and engineering aspects in three steps: (1) interviewing people about their spatial experiences as they perform a wayfinding task in the application space, (2) extracting the image schemata from these interviews and formulating a sequence of subtasks, and (3) structuring the application space (i.e., the wayfinding task) with the extracted image schemata. We use wayfinding in airports as a case study to demonstrate the methodology. Our observations show that most often image schemata are correlated with other image schemata in the form of image-schematic blocks and rarely occur in isolation. Such image-schematic blocks serve as a knowledge-representation scheme for wayfinding tasks.

Martin Raubal's work is partially supported by a scholarship from the Austrian government.

Max J. Egenhofer's work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF grants SBR-8810917, IRI-9309230, IRI-9613646, SBR-9700465, BDI-9723873, by Rome Laboratory under grant number F30602-95-1-0042, by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency under grant number NMA202-97-1-1023, and a Massive Digital Data Systems contract sponsored by the Advanced Research and Development Committee of the Community Management Staff.

Dieter Pfoser's work is partially supported by the Graduate School of the University of Maine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, USA

    Martin Raubal, Max J. Egenhofer, Dieter Pfoser & Nectaria Tryfona

  2. Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine, Boardman Hall, 04469-5711, Orono, ME, USA

    Martin Raubal, Max J. Egenhofer, Dieter Pfoser & Nectaria Tryfona

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  1. Martin Raubal
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  2. Max J. Egenhofer
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  3. Dieter Pfoser
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  4. Nectaria Tryfona
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Stephen C. Hirtle Andrew U. Frank

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Raubal, M., Egenhofer, M.J., Pfoser, D., Tryfona, N. (1997). Structuring space with image schemata: Wayfinding in airports as a case study. In: Hirtle, S.C., Frank, A.U. (eds) Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS. COSIT 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1329. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63623-4_44

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63623-4_44

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63623-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69616-2

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