Generation of Meaningful Location References for Referencing Traffic Information to Road Networks Using Qualitative Spatial Concepts

Location referencing systems (LRS) are a crucial requisite for referencing traffic information to a road network. In the past, several methods and standards for static or dynamic location referencing have been proposed. All of them support machine-interpretable location references but only some of them include human-interpretable concepts. If included, these references are based on pre-defined locations (e.g. as location catalogue) and often miss meaningful interlinking with road network models (e.g. locations being simply mapped to geographic coordinates). In a parallel research strand, ontological concepts for structuring road networks based on human conceptualizations of space have been proposed. So far, both methods have not been integrated. The current work closes this gap and proposes a generation process for meaningful location references on top of road networks based on qualitative spatial concepts. A prototypical implementation using OWL, Neo4J graph database and a standardized nationwide road network graph shows the practical applicability of the approach. Results indicate that the proposed approach is able to bridge the gap between existing road network models and human conceptualizations on multiple levels of abstraction.