Dynamic models of geographic environment using ontological relations

Abstract

The geographic environment contains different types of entities: for instance, cars, considered as geographical objects, as well as entities such as storms, considered as geographical phenomena. With these entities occurs something commonly called events. These represent the dynamics of a geographical environment. If these entities are modeled based on an object-oriented approach, only properties and relations between other entities are considered, but the dynamic aspects are not. However, if they are modeled based on an event-oriented approach, the semantic relations of the dynamic aspects are indispensably needed to model the environment, considering instantly changed geographic entities, properties and relations as well as the subsequent effects they may cause to the environment and to other entities. We use Ontology Relations to explicitly describe changes in the properties and relations of geographic entities modified by events. A proposed algorithm generates a semantic chain that represents a whole episode about events over different duration time intervals. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.