The development of spatio-temporal theories has attracted an increasing number of researchers from different sciences over the past few years. The objective is to bring representatives from these different communities, academics, students and practicioners together for a one-day workshop. The format of the workshop will encourage discussions and interactions which are the main organizing format of the workshop.

From early and landmark works in the late 80s and early 90s Temporal GIS and the development of spatio-temporal theories have prospered and being the object of a series of successful specialized workshops and panels (e.g., VLDB spatio-temporal workshop in 1999, AAG successive panels on temporal GIS, GIScience temporal workshop in 2008, COSIT 2011 specialized workshop on identifying objects, processes and events) and projects at the international level (e.g., EU Chorochronos project in the late 90s on the development of a research network on spatio-temporal databases, EU Move project on knowledge discovery from moving objects still under progress, …). These initiatives have been often driven by different disciplines (geography, computer science, cognitive sciences, …). Although those initiatives and projects have led to significant methodological and theoretical advances, the progress made by these different disciplines still deserve to be confronted in order to improve their impact and usability, particularly when considering the environmental, urban and social sciences that can benefitiate from them. Among the questions we plan to address:

• What were the theoretical research breakthroughs in the last 25 years that got us to where we are today?
• Are the spatio-temporal concepts, models, and reasoning frameworks developed so far general across all fields? Is a unified theory of spatio-temporal information feasible and a worthwhile goal across all disciplines?
• What are the main achievements and contributions of spatio-temporal theories and models to environmental, urban and social sciences? Where are the success scientific stories?
• What are the major scientific problems in environmental and urban sciences for temporal GIS research in the next 5 years? In the next 10+ years?
  
• What are the remaining research challenges or unsolved problems that require contributions from several disciplines to come up with comprehensive theoretical solutions?
  

 Position paper submission( extended) : May 24 2013

Author notification: June 21 2013

Camera ready deadline: July 17 2013

Workshop: September 2, 2013

• Christophe Claramunt, Naval Academy Research Institute, France
• Kathleen Stewart, University of Iowa, USA
• Mike Worboys, University of Maine, USA
• Stephan Winter, University of Melbourne,  Australia