Relating Land Use to the Landscape Character: Toward an Ontological Inference Tool

Geographic information science increasingly meets cognitive science, as comprehending (i.e. perceiving and conceptualising) spatial characteristics induces spatial cognition and behaviour. However, the widely deployed models of space fail in accounting for those conceptualisation mechanisms. In this context, the present work aims at relating human spatial perception of land use to the landscape characteristics in order to build an ontology from human experience of geographical space. This experience is to be captured using a questionnaire. Though Land use information is readily available from various commercial sources, the methods with which such information is created are time-, and resource-consuming. Here, the retained solution is to infer as much land use information from topology as possible.