STEAMER - Spatio-temporal information, adaptability, multimedia and knowledge representation

The Steamer team focuses its research on the processing chain of spatially and temporally referenced information. Our objective is to propose models, methods and tools to improve the acquisition, modeling, querying, reasoning and visualization in spatial and temporal decision-making applications or systems. These scientific concerns are located at the confluence of many disciplines among which computer science and geography occupy a prominent place, in what is more broadly called Geographic Information Sciences (GI Sciences) or geomatics. Our work is also based on research in cognitive sciences, for a better understanding of spatio-temporal phenomena, a more effective joint consideration of spatial, temporal and thematic dimensions in reasoning or in the simulation of human behavior.

The considerable progress made in various techniques of acquisition (Internet of Things), storage and exploitation (Web of data, knowledge graphs, dedicated languages) or restitution (OGC Web Services, webmapping) have widened the field of applications involving spatial and temporal information. These mutations are combined with the considerable increase of available data brought by Open Data initiatives. The STeamer team contributes to innovations in the field of GI Sciences and to the way they are conceptualized, implemented and valorized. The research is organized along complementary and interconnected axes:

• Spatio-temporal knowledge representation and reasoning
• Crowdsourcing, social choice and simulation of human behavior
• Geovisualization for decision support

The concept of trajectory is at the heart of several research projects conducted within the team. It is studied in many forms that correspond to the multiple declinations of study objects in environmental sciences, in humanities and social sciences, or in the field of digital humanities. Thus, we approach the trajectory of socio-eco-systems, the trajectory of territories (especially their division), the trajectory of individuals (daily mobility or in a biographical vision) whose evolution in time and space we wish to follow.

Our scientific collaborations and projects feed our work with concrete problems that often have a strong societal stake. Among the application domains we address, we can mention the prevention of natural risks, crisis management, the development of autonomous vehicles in shared spaces, the territorial analysis of health or mobility data, etc.