SSO 2011 Workshop Report: 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Spatial Semantics and Ontologies (SSO) 2011: (Chicago, IL - November 1, 2011)

We were pleased to organize the 1st Spatial Semantics and Ontologies (SSO) international workshop as part of the 19th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2011). Semantic technologies are an emerging topic. This workshop was motivated by the need for semantics-related research for geospatial data and to provide a place for discussion and distribution of the work in this area. ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2011 offered a perfect venue to bring together computer scientists with spatial/geospatial domain experts, and this workshop was designed to help engage and create a synergy with computer and spatial scientists interested in the semantic area. We anticipated that technical advancements would be made by computer specialists focusing on the spatial area in collaboration with domain specialists who know the semantic problems they face. Having this workshop at ACM GIS opened the research to include wide areas of computer science.