Ontologies of geographic information

This article explores the notion of a system of ontologies specifically designed for the needs of an information science. A framework for geographic information ontologies is outlined that focuses on geographic information constructs rather than on the direct representation of real-world entities or on linguistic terms. The framework takes the form of a generative hierarchy anchored by the notion of intentionality at one end and of a spatiotemporal field of potentially relevant information at the other. Two theoretical notions are used in the generation of the hierarchy. The first is the principle of semantic contraction, whereby, starting from a level of geographic information constructs specified so as to reflect user intentionality, semantically coherent domains of properties are removed over several steps until only the rudiments of a spatiotemporal information system are left. The second notion is that of object of discourse, which allows entities to be represented as the composites of geographic information constructs at the higher levels of the hierarchy, explicitly reflecting the connections between the purpose, function, appropriate internal constitution, and ensuing categorization of the entities represented. The framework's main contribution is thus twofold: first, it allows the notions of user purpose and object function to be directly built into geographic representations; second, it proposes a hierarchy of ontological levels that are linked by systematic semantic relations. Further, the framework presents an integrated view of object and field representations. It may also provide a novel perspective on a number of issues of ongoing interest in geographic information science.     

An evaluation of ontology matching techniques on geospatial ontologies

Standardization is one of the pillars of interoperability. In this context, efforts promoted by the Open Geospatial Consortium, such as CityGML (Technical University, Berlin), a standard for exchanging three-dimensional models or urban city objects, are welcomed. However, information from other domains of interest (e.g. energy efficiency or building information modeling) is needed for tasks such as land planning, large-scale flooding analysis, or demand/supply energy simulations. CityGML allows extension in order to integrate information from other domains, but the development process is expensive because there is no way to perform it automatically. The discovery of correspondences between CityGML concepts and other domains concepts poses a significant challenge.

Ontology matching is the research field emerged from the Semantic Web to address automatic ontology integration. Using the ontology underlying CityGML and the ontologies which model other domains of interest, ontology matching would be able to find the correspondences that would permit the integration in a more automatic manner than it is done now.

In this paper, we evaluate if ontology matching techniques allow performing an automatic integration of geospatial information modeled from different viewpoints. In order to achieve this, an evaluation methodology was designed, and it was applied to the discovery of relationships between CityGML and ontologies coming from the building information modeling and Geospatial Semantic Web domains. The methodology and the results of the evaluation are presented. The best results have been achieved using string-based techniques, while matching systems give the worst precision and recall. Only in a few cases the values are over 50%, which shows the limitations when these techniques are applied to ontologies with a partial overlap.     

基于地理语义的空间关系查询和推理

地理空间中的地物,根据其本体类型具有不同的地理语义特征。受到地理语义的影响,人们在描述几何特征和关系相似的物体之间的空间关系时,所用的词汇是不同的。目前,人们在空间关系的自然语言查询方面的研究主要集中在空间关系描述、空间关系自然语言形式化表达、空间关系自然语言查询语句的转换,以及空间关系自然语言查询的查询接口等方面,没有考虑到地理本体的语义差异,这会使得空间关系的自然语言查询不能符合人类语言和认知的习惯。本文依据一些学者在空间关系的自然语言描述的形式化(主要是线和线、线和面等形状的空间地物之间的关系)研究的基础上,针对不同地理本体类型的空间地物和空间关系自然语言描述词汇之间对应的语义关系有所不同的特点,总结了自然语言词汇在描述空间关系时的对应规则,提出不同特征类型地物和描述词汇之间的规则库设计方法,并设计部分空间地物的规则实例。最后,结合空间关系判断函数,设计具体查询系统实践举例证明。     

基于本体的基础地理信息分类层次研究

本体源于哲学,近年来在人工智能和计算机科学领域得到广泛应用,主要用于知识的表达、共享及重用.将本体引入地理信息科学领域,对于实现地理信息知识的表达、共享及重用具有重要意义.基于此,本文从本体的含义与结构出发,在分析现有基础地理信息分类基础上,详细阐述了基于本体的地理要素分类方法,结合领域专家所建立的分类体系,提出了基于本体的基础地理信息分类,并实现了基本的基础地理信息分类体系.     

地理数据空间本体构建及其在数据检索中的应用

随着新地理信息时代的来临,地理数据已经呈现出爆炸式增长的趋势。如何在海量的地理数据中准确、及时地找到人们所需要的数据,并把相关联的数据智能地推荐给用户,成为亟待解决的一大难题。针对传统以关键词、主题词等字符串匹配为核心的数据发现方法存在的查不全、查不准的问题,本文通过对地理空间中的概念、属性、关系、规则,以及相应实例的详细表达,初步提出了地理空间本体构建框架,并在此基础上构建了较为完整的地理数据空间本体,以实现地理数据的智能关联,最后在地球系统科学数据共享平台中进行应用实践。结果表明,引入地理数据空间本体后,检索的结果在数据的查全和查准方面显著提高,而且还能智能推荐相关联的数据信息。本文构建的地理数据空间本体对于大数据时代背景下地理数据的精确发现和共享有重要意义。     

地理空间信息在电子政务中的应用研究

地理空间信息是认知、开发、利用和保护人类有限生存空间所必需的基础性、战略性信息资源,是全社会的共同财富。在电子政务的发展进程中,地理空间信息具有不可替代的重要支持作用。本文从电子政务和地理空间信息的概念入手,研究了地理空间信息在电子政务中的应用。     

基于Oracle语义城市地图分类信息智能查询

面对万维网日益增长的地图信息查询需求,利用对行政区划、地理要素分类及用户添加等地理要素的语义信息进行辅助地图分类查询。根据相关的标准建立了中国行政区划本体和基础地理要素分类本体,将这两个本体存储到Oracle语义库中,采用SPAQEL完成语义信息查询,以提高地理要素检索的智能性。最后,通过建立的原型系统进行查询试验,验证了语义信息辅助地图分类查询可以提高信息检索的查全率和查准率。     

地理数据服务语义表达与自动发现

地理数据的复杂性和不支持语义的服务发现机制常常导致数据用户很难准确地找到自己真正需要的地理数据服务。为了便于用户从语义上快速准确地找到自己需要的地理数据服务,本文首先构建了地理元数据本体,并采用元数据本体来描述地理数据服务的相关语义信息,接着提出了基于本体的概念间语义相似度计算的算法,最后在该算法的基础上,通过语义匹配来实现地理数据服务基于语义的自动发现。实验结果表明,文中的方法可以提高地理数据服务发现的准确率和智能化程度。     

本体驱动下的网络专题地图制图服务模型

现有网络专题地图多由专家设计、制作,再进行网络发布,难以满足分布式环境下用户的在线制图需求。针对这一问题,定义了网络专题地图制图领域本体,根据此本体,利用Web Service技术实现了一个网络专题地图制图系统,并将其应用于分布式空间统计数据的在线专题制图。     

空间信息语义网格

在分析本体和网格技术的基础上,针对空间信息系统对信息语义的特殊要求,提出了空间信息语义网格的概念,并用本体构造了空间信息语义网格体系结构。