Granularity of locations referred to by place descriptions

Place descriptions are a predominant means of human spatial communication. Their automated interpretation still poses a challenge for geospatial services. This paper explores one issue of this interpretation process: determining the level of granularity to which a localization of a described place is possible. Knowing this finest possible level of granularity supports resolving place descriptions, for example, in geographic information retrieval. In particular, the focus is on integrating spatial relations into this process. To this end, a mechanistic procedure for determining the level of granularity is proposed and applied to a place descriptions corpus. Feasibility of the procedure is evaluated in a comparison of place descriptions with people’s self-reported position on a map. Findings show that the procedure delivers generally good results in agreement with the corresponding map locations.