Use of Knowledge Acquisition to Build Wildfire Representation in Geographical Information Systems

Wildfire provides a good example to study spatio-temporal representations for GIS applications because of its spatio-temporal variability. One of the salient features ofa GIS is itsbuilt-in capability to calculate and maintain centroid, length, area, and topological relations among spatial objects. Likewise, a competent temporal GIS should be able to support queries about temporal measures, such as rate, frequency, life expectancy, and temporal relations. In doing so, temporal GIS need well-designed representations to structure spatiotemporal constructs and their relations. While temporal information is often incorporated into GIS by time-stamping attributes or layers, this research applies knowledge acquisition techniques of written materials analysis and unstructured interviews with wildfire professionals to elicit conceptual models for wildfire representation. Four elicited conceptual models form a wildfire information cycle which presents a continuum in wildfire conceptualization across different type...