Exploring the Notion of Spatial Lenses

We explore the idea of spatial lenses as pieces of software interpreting data sets in a particular spatial view of an environment. The lenses serve to prepare the data sets for subsequent analysis in that view. Examples include a network lens to view places in a literary text, or a field lens to interpret pharmacy sales in terms of seasonal allergy risks. The theory underlying these lenses is that of core concepts of spatial information, but here we exploit how these concepts enhance the usability of data rather than that of systems. Spatial lenses also supply transformations between multiple views of an environment, for example, between field and object views. They lift these transformations from the level of data format conversions to that of understanding an environment in multiple ways. In software engineering terms, spatial lenses are defined by constructors, generating instances of core concept representations from spatial data sets. Deployed as web services or libraries, spatial lenses would make larger varieties of data sets amenable to mapping and spatial analysis, compared to today's situation, where file formats determine and limit what one can do. To illustrate and evaluate the idea of spatial lenses, we present a set of experimental lenses, implemented in a variety of languages, and test them with a variety of data sets, some of them non-spatial.