Locativetime

Locativetime is a formal concept in linguistics and information modeling that coordinates spatial location and temporal position to describe events, states, or entities. It provides a compact representation that pairs a place component with a time component, enabling precise description and efficient querying of when and where something occurs.

In typical deployments, locativetime consists of a locative element (place, region, route) and a temporal element (instant, interval, or duration). Data representations may store these as a structured object or tuple with fields such as place, coordinates or toponym, time, and uncertainty. Time is commonly expressed using standard formats such as ISO 8601, while place may be represented with toponyms or coordinates. Examples include locativetime(place='Paris', time='1814-06-18', event='Battle of Paris') or locativetime(place='Brooklyn, NY', time='1990-07', event='Concert').

Applications of locativetime appear in digital humanities, historiography, geographic information systems, event databases, narrative generation, and search interfaces that allow filtering results by both place and time. The framework supports descriptive and query operations that combine spatial and temporal criteria.

Semantics and operations associated with locativetime include capabilities for containment, proximity, overlap, and sequencing of events in space-time. Key challenges involve handling uncertain or imprecise locations, historical changes in place names and boundaries, calendar reforms, time zone differences, and inconsistencies in date granularity across sources.

See also: spatiotemporal data, geotagging, temporal databases, ontologies, GeoSPARQL, ISO 8601.