| Element | Definition |
| Activity | Action performed by individuals (e.g., objects or humans) in space and time. “The consequence of activities by an individual may generate movement of the individual or cause changes to the individual’s characteristics”. Activities occur at a specific time. |
| Event* | An event represents an incident, “an occurrence of something with significance that drives noteworthy changes at locations over time. The decision on ‘significance’ and ‘noteworthy’ is situational and problem-dependent”. Events denote happening. Events are occurrents, i.e., they happen and are then gone (e.g., rainfalls, landslides). |
| Process* | “A gradual transformation that transcends geographic properties, forms, and patterns over time. The determination of ‘gradualness’ is scale–dependent”, either temporal or spatial. Processes mark transformation of stages or phases in space and time. While events refer to happenings, processes emphasize a ‘becoming’ (e.g., initiation, transition, development, and evolution). A rainfall in a city, for example, is an event, but how a rainstorm develops and produces rain over space and time is a process.Activities, events, and processes are all scale–dependent, and their differentiation may be situationally determined. “What is an event in one situation can be a process or an action in another.”. |
| Change | “Substitution of properties in an object, at a location, or conditions in an environment. Changes can occur to population counts, identities, thematic attributes, and spatial or temporal characteristics.”. |
| Movement | “Shift in location of a geographic object over time. The object must maintain the same identity during a movement.”. |