Geospatial Thinking - The 5 dimensions of Location!

Location seems like such an obvious notion. Everything is somewhere as we like to say in the geospatial industry. But is it really that obvious? Are we always talking about the same thing? Can there be more than one type of "location"? Is it more complex than we think?

I got to thinking about this a short while back. Being me I had to try to make a framework, of course! So thinking through some principles:

• Location should be system independent

• Location should be data format independent

• Location should be logically consistent.

With these as my reference frame I managed to develop 5 different "location" types that I think are core to what we mean when we say something is somewhere.

#1. Functional Location - where am I in the process?

This is one for all the utilities, manufacturing plants, resource processing plants etc. Functional Location is critical to understating how the process works and where you are in that process. Functional Location is a core concept in any utility and is one of the foundations of asset management in that context.

#2. Physical Location - where is the address again?

Physical location can have a lot in common with Functional Location and is often confused with it. This is all about an addressing system of some kind. With 4 to 5 address components Uber finds your house! The most common addressing concept is, of course, street address. However, you can use this in lots of different contexts - for example nested catchments in a waterway network are a type of addressing system that fit into physical location ethos.

#3. Coordinate Location - where am I using GPS

Anyone familiar wit GPS, GIS or just plain old google maps will understand this one. This is your classic X,Y & Z in whatever is your preferred datum/projection system. The foundation of all modern tracking systems this one is the least friendly to humans but super friendly for your computer.

#4. Referential Location - where am with respect to that other thing?

This is perhaps the least well know, an understood, of all the dimensions of location. This has its roots in survey in many respects - navigation from a known location to another using it as a reference point. It's also the heart of Dynamic Segmentation - a concept used in GIS and asset management to efficiently record multiple attributes along linear features without having to break up that line (a space saver!).

#5. Temporal Location - where am I when?

Last but by no means least we come to Time. Time is not an obvious location but keep in mind even if you stand still you are never in the same location from second to second. With the explosion in the use of sensors Time is a loaction in a sequence. Time helps us line up our measurements across sensors creating meaning of the streams of data from multiple devices.

So Functions, Physical, Coordinate, Referential and Temporal these are my dimensions of location. So what is this important?

Going back to that adage "everything is somewhere" - location is one of the great unifiers across data systems. Location is, or at least should be, one of the primary ways we link across the various data models that form the digital representation of our world and the things we care about. Solving for location in a data/systems agnostic way goes a long way to achieving connectivity in our digital landscapes.

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