A Cognitive Perspective on Spatial Context

This paper develops a representation-theoretic notion of spatial context for cognitive agents that interact with spatial environments. We discuss the state of the art in defining context as used in context-aware and / or location-aware systems. In contrast to existing approaches, we define context through cognitive processes. Placing cognitive processes in the focus of our context definition allows for a truly user-centered perspective: conceptuali- zations imbue spatial structures with meaning. This allows for fixing termino- logical problems and relating context definitions to work in spatial information theory and cognitive science. Although we focus on spatial context, the approach is generic and can be adapted to other domains in which cognitive aspects concerning users of information systems are central.

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