SPgen: A benchmark generator for spatial link discovery tools

Abstract

A number of real and synthetic benchmarks have been proposed for evaluating the performance of link discovery systems. So far, only a limited number of link discovery benchmarks target the problem of linking geo-spatial entities. However, some of the largest knowledge bases of the Linked Open Data Web, such as LinkedGeoData contain vast amounts of spatial information. Several systems that manage spatial data and consider the topology of the spatial resources and the topological relations between them have been developed. In order to assess the ability of these systems to handle the vast amount of spatial data and perform the much needed data integration in the Linked Geo Data Cloud, it is imperative to develop benchmarks for geo-spatial link discovery. In this paper we propose the Spatial Benchmark Generator SPgen that can be used to test the performance of link discovery systems which deal with topological relations as proposed in the state of the art DE-9IM (Dimensionally Extended nine-Intersection Model). SPgen implements all topological relations of DE-9IM between LineStrings and Polygons in the two-dimensional space. A comparative analysis with benchmarks produced using SPgen to assess and identify the capabilities of AML, OntoIdea, RADON and Silk spatial link discovery systems is provided.