As research advances, our conceptual understanding also changes. Computational approaches do little to recognize the evolution that occurs at the conceptual level during the research process. This can result in misunderstanding between knowledge producers and consumers and so inhibit the reusability of outcomes. In this article, we describe how changes at the conceptual level can be represented, along with related changes to data and methods, and how appropriate connections between these various artefacts can be maintained. To demonstrate these ideas, we show how categories used in remote sensing and land cover analysis change over time and how these changes are linked to various research activities. We present a new system (called AdvoCate) that augments typical GIS and remote sensing functionality with a conceptual model of categories that can undergo change, and that also captures the cause of conceptual change and its extent. We argue that concepts and categories should be represented explicitly and richly within GIS, because without this, we have a poor idea of what our modeled entities really mean, and by implication how they should be used appropriately. We demonstrate the usefulness of this deeper representation using examples of category evolution from a land cover mapping exercise.

中文翻译：

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类别不断变化，但它们的计算表示形式是固定的：这是一个问题

随着研究的进展，我们对概念的理解也在变化。计算方法几乎无法识别研究过程中在概念层面发生的演变。这可能会导致知识生产者和消费者之间的误解，从而抑制结果的可重用性。在本文中，我们描述了如何表示概念上的更改以及与数据和方法相关的更改，以及如何维护这些不同工件之间的适当连接。为了说明这些想法，我们展示了遥感和土地覆盖分析中使用的类别如何随时间变化，以及这些变化如何与各种研究活动联系在一起。我们提出了一个新系统（称为AdvoCate）通过可以进行更改的类别的概念模型增强了典型的GIS和遥感功能，并且还捕获了概念更改的原因及其范围。我们认为，应该在GIS中明确，丰富地表示概念和类别，因为如果没有这样的概念和类别，我们对建模实体的真正含义以及如何正确使用它们的含义将不甚了解。我们使用土地覆盖图测绘中类别演变的示例证明了这种更深层表示的有用性。