Session II: Geospatial

Session Organizers:

Abstract:

Location, space, and spatial relations are important for a broad range of research and professional activity. While semantic models and technologies for spatial information include geometric features, coordinates, and some topological relations, richer and more nuanced and diverse geospatial concepts and vocabularies have not received the same attention, including representations and methods developed in spatial cognition, formal ontology, spatial knowledge representation and reasoning, qualitative spatial reasoning, and natural language processing. In many cases, geospatial concepts need to be modeled as multi-faceted ontological entities and not just as general locational attributes. Likewise, new and more efficient geocomputational methods are needed to support efficient geospatial information queries over the Geospatial Semantic Web to share and exchange larger sets of geospatial information.

This session brings together disparate elements of the geospatial semantics community to examine conceptual and implemented approaches to geospatial semantics and to explore paths forward for shared vocabularies, semantics, and innovative techniques.

PROGRAM:

Rich Spatial Semantics 1: “Computing with Geospatial Ontologies”

A) "Geospatial Ontologies and Natural Language”

Gary Berg-Cross. Enriched Geospatial Concepts for Glacier & Terrain and Related Domains

Jayakrishnan Ajayakumar, Andrew Curtis and Jacqueline Curtis. Automatic Extraction of Spatial Mentions from Spatial Video Geonarratives using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

Dalia Varanka. Scoping a vocabulary for spatial relation properties

Torsten Hahmann and Gregory Kritzman. Connecting formal and natural language representations of spatial knowledge: Lessons from a study on cardinal directions

20min Discussion: Challenges at the Intersection of Natural Language and Ontologies

B) "Reasoning with Geospatial Semantics"

Chuanrong Zhang, Tian Zhao, E. Lynn Usery, Dalia Varanka, and Weidong Li.  Evaluation of Spatial Join Algorithms for Geospatial Semantic Query.

Shirly Stephen. Identifying Ontology Statements that affect SAT Solver Performance through Empirical Evaluation.

10min Discussion: Challenges in Geospatial Semantic Reasoning

Rich Spatial Semantics 2: “Ontologies in Support of Geoscience”

C) "Issues in Developing Domain and Domain Reference Ontologies"

Gaurav Sinha. Strategies for Improving and Validating the Landform Reference Ontology (LFRO)

Lynn Usery. A Semantic Representation of a Cartography Body of Knowledge

Xiaogang Ma. A Method for Concept and Attribute Versioning in the Geologic Time Ontology

15min Discussion: Challenges for developing better and better-used geoscience ontologies

D) "Supporting Visualization & Analytics in Geosciences"

Anirudh Prabhu, Peter Fox, Stephan Zednik, Manil Maskey and Rahul Ramachandran. A Rules-Based Service for Suggesting Visualizations to Analyze Earth Science Phenomena

Alexandre Sorokine, Robert Stewart and Jason Kaufman. The Need for Representing Multiple Viewpoints in Spatio-Temporal Ontologies

10min Discussion: Challenges in supporting visualization & analytics

15min Synthesis & Discussion: The Way Forward for Geospatial Ontologies and Semantics