Development Framework for Qualitative Spatial and Temporal Reasoning Systems

A significant number of qualitative methods for representing and reasoning about spatial and temporal information have now been developed that address limitations of purely numerical approaches. Despite this, qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning (QSTR) is yet to be fully utilised by researchers and software developers outside the QSTR community. In our view, the problem is that in many cases none of the existing pre-made QSTR methods directly meet the needs of a task and instead require modifications. In other cases a completely new and unique QSTR approach may be required. To address this we are developing a framework that supports the application of QSTR by providing a methodology of developing custom QSTR systems from specific task information. In this paper we give an overview of our framework. As an example we also present the design component, one of the key framework processes, in more detail.