Informed Virtual Geographic Environments: A geometrically precise and semantically enriched model for Multi-Agent Geo-Simulations

In this paper, we propose a novel approach that extends our Informed Virtual Geographic Environment (IVGE) model in order to effectively manage knowledge about the environment and support agents´ cognitive capabilities and spatial behaviours. Our approach relies on previous well established theories on human spatial behaviours and the way people apprehend the spatial characteristics of their surroundings in order to navigate and to interact with the physical world. It is also inspired by Gibson´s work on affordances and knowledge provided by the environment to guide agent-environment interactions. The main contribution of our approach is to provide cognitive situated agents with: (1) knowledge about the environment represented using Conceptual Graphs (CG); (2) tools and mechanisms that allow them to acquire knowledge about the environment; and (3) the capability to reason about this knowledge and to autonomously make decisions and to act with respect to both their own and the virtual environment´s characteristics.