Exploring potential human activities in physical and virtual spaces: a spatio‐temporal GIS approach

Hongbo Yu, Shih‐Lung Shaw
2008 International Journal of Geographical Information Science  
Opportunities of potential human activities have extended from physical space to virtual space in today's society. Based on a proposed conceptual framework that models the relationships between physical and virtual spaces, this paper presents an attempt to adjust the space-time prism concept of Hagerstrand's time geography to identify potential activity opportunities in virtual space, focusing on virtual space access channels in physical space. A three-dimensional (3D) spatio-temporal
more » ... information system (GIS) design is then developed to accommodate the adjusted space-time prism concept and support the effective representation, visualization, and analysis of potential human activities and interactions in physical and virtual spaces using the prism representation. Following the design, a prototype system is successfully implemented in a 3D GIS environment. Such a system will offer powerful analysis tools for studies related to potential human activities and applications such as location-based services (LBS) and accessibility analysis in the information age.
doi:10.1080/13658810701427569 fatcat:aj47fv6jdrb6rgnscq7um2wc7m