Understanding spatial complexities: could similes and metaphors be useful?

Are there possible benefits to be gained from emulating the human way (of thought and language) with a machine way? This article outlines the concepts of similes and metaphors. This article aims to emphasise that similes and metaphors can be utilised to help understand and extract useful information from spatial data. As similes and metaphors are utilised in human language and understandings it may also be efficacious for spatial domains, in that it may inform and allow us to understand spatial complexities. Similes and metaphors are the verbal expressions of similarity. This article couches similes and metaphors in our spatial language (verbal expressions) as spatial similarity. The author realises that spatial similarity is just one subset of our spatial cognition ability. The general concept outlined in this article is that spatial similarity is a generative technique to analyse the cached information inherent in spatial sciences. This similarity technique is utilised to group natural kinds that manifest similar amenities in complex environments. If we then know or understand one spatial entity in this natural group (s1) then we might understand other entities within that same natural group (s1) from the complex environment.