A Task‐Based Ontology Approach to Automate Geospatial Data Retrieval

This paper presents a task‐based and Semantic Web approach to find geospatial data. The purpose of the project is to improve data discovery and facilitate automatic retrieval of data sources. The work presented here helps create the beginnings of a Geospatial Semantic Web. The intent is to create a system that provides appropriate results to application users who search for data when facing tasks such as emergency response or planning activities. In our task‐based system, we formalize the relationships between types of tasks, including emergency response, and types of data sources needed for those tasks. Domain knowledge, including criteria describing data sources, is recorded in an ontology language. With the ontology, reasoning can be done to infer various types of information including which data sources meet specific criteria for use in particular tasks. The vision presented here is that in an emergency, for example, a user accesses a Web‐based application and selects the type of emergency and the geographic area. The application then returns the types and locations (URLs) of the specific geospatial data needed. We explore the abilities and limitations of the OWL Web Ontology Language along with other Semantic Web technologies for this purpose.

[1]  J. Lane,et al.  The Public Sector , 1996 .

[2]  E. J. Friedman-hill,et al.  Jess, the Java expert system shell , 1997 .

[3]  Yaser A. Bishr,et al.  Overcoming the Semantic and Other Barriers to GIS Interoperability , 1998, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[4]  Hans-Jörg Schek,et al.  Interoperating Geographic Information Systems , 1999, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[5]  Z E. Jess Friedman-hill,et al.  The Java Expert System Shell , 2000 .

[6]  James A. Hendler,et al.  The Semantic Web" in Scientific American , 2001 .

[7]  Dieter Fensel,et al.  Ontologies: A silver bullet for knowledge management and electronic commerce , 2002 .

[8]  David J. DeWitt,et al.  The Niagara Internet Query System , 2001, IEEE Data Eng. Bull..

[9]  Marinos Kavouras,et al.  Fusion of top-level and geographical domain ontologies based on context formation and complementarity , 2001, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[10]  David M. Mark,et al.  Geographical categories: an ontological investigation , 2001, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[11]  Raphael M. Malyankar.  Vocabulary development for markup languages: a case study with maritime information , 2002, WWW '02.

[12]  Robert Meersman,et al.  Data modelling versus ontology engineering , 2002, SGMD.

[13]  Max J. Egenhofer,et al.  Presentations and Bearers of Semantics on the Web , 2002, FLAIRS.

[14]  Guoray Cai,et al.  GeoVSM: An Integrated Retrieval Model for Geographic Information , 2002, GIScience.

[15]  Antonio Badia,et al.  Ontologies , 2001, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[16]  Sabine Timpf,et al.  The need for task ontologies in interoperable GIS , 2002 .

[17]  Max J. Egenhofer,et al.  Toward the semantic geospatial web , 2002, GIS '02.

[18]  Frederico T. Fonseca,et al.  Using Ontologies for Integrated Geographic Information Systems , 2002, Trans. GIS.

[19]  Max J. Egenhofer,et al.  Determining Semantic Similarity among Entity Classes from Different Ontologies , 2003, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[20]  N. Wiegand,et al.  Ontology-Based Geospatial Web Query System , 2003 .

[21]  Henrik Eriksson,et al.  Using JessTab to Integrate Protégé and Jess , 2003, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[22]  H. Lan,et al.  SWRL : A semantic Web rule language combining OWL and ruleML , 2004 .

[23]  James Campbell,et al.  Public Commons of Geographic Data: Research and Development Challenges , 2004, GIScience.

[24]  Alia I. Abdelmoty,et al.  The SPIRIT Spatial Search Engine: Architecture, Ontologies and Spatial Indexing , 2004, GIScience.

[25]  Ian Horrocks,et al.  OWL Web Ontology Language Reference-W3C Recommen-dation , 2004 .

[26]  L. Stein,et al.  OWL Web Ontology Language - Reference , 2004 .

[27]  Holger Knublauch,et al.  The Protégé OWL Plugin: An Open Development Environment for Semantic Web Applications , 2004, SEMWEB.

[28]  Hartwig H. Hochmair.  Ontology Matching for Spatial Data Retrieval from Internet Portals , 2005, GeoS.

[29]  Benjamin N. Grosof,et al.  Supporting Rule System Interoperability on the Semantic Web with SWRL , 2005, SEMWEB.

[30]  Hayley Mizen,et al.  Ontology Ontogeny: Understanding How an Ontology Is Created and Developed , 2005, GeoS.

[31]  Marinos Kavouras,et al.  Comparing categories among geographic ontologies , 2005, Comput. Geosci..

[32]  Krzysztof Janowicz.  Extending Semantic Similarity Measurement with Thematic Roles , 2005, GeoS.

[33]  Robert G. Raskin,et al.  Knowledge representation in the semantic web for Earth and environmental terminology (SWEET) , 2005, Comput. Geosci..

[34]  Alia I. Abdelmoty,et al.  Ontology-Based Spatial Query Expansion in Information Retrieval , 2005, OTM Conferences.

[35]  M. Egenhofer,et al.  Beyond Mapping: Meeting National Needs Through Enhanced Geographic Information Science , 2006 .

[36]  Eva Klien,et al.  Ontology‐based retrieval of geographic information , 2006, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[37]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  Geospatial Ontology Development and Semantic Analytics , 2006, Trans. GIS.

[38]  Wendy Hall,et al.  The Semantic Web Revisited , 2006, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[39]  Dave Kolas,et al.  Geospatial semantic Web: architecture of ontologies , 2006, 2006 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[40]  Eero Hyvönen,et al.  Modeling and Reasoning About Changes in Ontology Time Series , 2007, Ontologies.