Design for An Implementation of Temporal Reasoning by Computer Systems

摘要

This thesis proposes a set of design specifications for a computer system which is able to store and retrieve temperal information about events. In this study, a single event is represented by a node-and-arc set which specifically stores duration data about that event. Additionally, each event is tied to other events to reflect ordering (event A before event B) and containment (event A during event B as a sub-event). Thus the entire data structure can be viewed as a kind of hierarchy in which more general events are made up of shorter and shorter components. Also presented are methods to add and delete event sets from the data structure as well as algorithms for simple information retrieval. Finally, this paper gives an overview of recent work in temporal information representation and reasoning.