Supporting frameworks for the geospatial semantic web

Abstract

A lot of information on the web is geographically referenced. Discovering and linking this information poses eminent research challenges to the geospatial semantic web, with regards to the representation and manipulation of geographic data. Towards addressing these challenges, this work explores the potential of the current semantic web languages and tools. In particular, an integrated logical framework of rules and ontologies, using current W3C standards, is assessed for modeling geospatial ontologies of place encoding both symbolic and geometric references to place locations. Spatial reasoning is incorporated in the framework to facilitate the deduction of implicit semantics and for expressing spatial integrity constraints. The logical framework is then extended with geo-computation engines that offer more effective manipulations of geometric information. Example data sets mined from web resources are used to demonstrate and evaluate both frameworks, offering insights to their potentials and limitations. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.