Communicating Geographic Information in Context

This paper examines extensions by Dretske, Barwise, Seligman and others to the Shannon-Weaver model of information communication, with special reference to geographic information. Classifications of entities into types are taken as the basis for information repositories, while structure-preserving mappins called infomorphism provide the linkages. A key notion is that of a channel, which can be used to model the notions of contextuality and spatial representations. Context is a key issue in communication, and the approach here is to allow the communication channel to mediate between the contexts of the communicators. In the case of geographic information, particular features of channel, such as accuracy and level of detail, will be examined, and the paper will discuss how vagueness and multi-cnextuality can be handled by the theory.