eSpaceML: An Event-Driven Spatial Annotation Framework

This paper proposes eSpaceML, as a representation scheme for annotating event driven spatial expressions in natural language. It adopts SpatialML, (MITRE, 2009) and ISO-Space (ISO, 2010) as a basis for the development of a novel, distributed spatial annotation scheme. SpatialML, focuses on the annotation of spatial locations and their topological relations, while both ISO-Space and eSpaceML attempt to extend the scope beyond the treatment of toponyms. ISO-Space and eSpaceML also link space to events in various ways but with considerable differences. Unlike ISO-Space, which attempts to provide a self-contained framework for the various links, eSpaceML treats them in a distributed manner, operating as a pivotal system that refers to several other established annotation schemes such as MAF (ISO, 2008) and ISO-TimeML, (ISO, 2009c) for morphosyntactic as well as temporal-eventual annotations.