Researeh On Ontology Of Place And Its Applications In Geospatial Data Organization

Compared to geographic coordinates, looking up location information by place names is a better way which fits people's requirement of the geographic cognition, but it is not convenient for people to look up the concrete locations related to one place name by the retrieval mechanism based on keywords, because it can not resolve the semantic problem of place name. Ontology of place can resolve it effectually by modeling on geographic objects which are denominated.Semantic Web is the new information retrieval environment which conquers the lack of the retrieval mechanism based on keywords. It can provide an information organization framework to realize semantic retrieval. Accordingly, the role of Geospatial Semantic Web is providing the retrieval service of geospatial information based on semantics. Ontology of place combined Geospatial Semantic Web can provide an effective method to realize semantic retrieval based on place names.As realizing semantic retrieval of geographic information based on place name is its aim, this paper studies the theories, technologies and applications related to ontology of place systematically. The emphasis are conceptual design and formalization of the ontology of place, application of ontology of place about geospatial information retrieval and the organization based on Semantic Web.The main works of the paper is as follow:1. For conquering the lack of the retrieval mechanism based on keywords, we put forward the organization theories and the method of geospatial web information based on ontology of place, and summarize the research status on it, and propose the paper's research contents and the resolve methods systematically.2. After introducing the theories of Ontology and ontology conceptions systematically, we put forward the conception of broad and narrow sense ontology by innovating, which is a richness and development of ontology theories and makes it convenient to known and understanding ontology theories and technical method.3. Introduce some conceptions of semantic Web and the relationship between it and ontology or information retrieval. Through analyzing the architecture of the Semantic Web, we propose GIR information organization framework based on Semantic Web, that is to say, an organization framework of information constituted by three layers:GIS data source, metadata and ontology of place, which provides the theories and technical bases for solving the problem of sharing geospatial information.4. Aiming to the GIR cognizing requirement of common users based on semantic Web, we suggest the conceptions of Ontology of place and the methods to solving semantic problems of place names, propose the conceptual design framework of ontology of place based on reused place name dictionary and geographic glossary, and studies the composition and building methods of Ontology of place Systematically.5. Explore the theories and technical methods of the ontology of place formalization systematically. After introducing and comparing the ontology languages, we analyze the lack of OWL about its ability in expressing spatial ontology and spatial reasoning rules. And then we propose a method that uses OWL combined with SWRL to express the spatial ontology, as that could solve the common problem in the geo-ontology researches.6. Study the application of the ontology of place in GIR information organization systematically. Aiming to the data organization problems in the mechanism of GIS data source and geospatial metadata, according to GIR information organization framework, we re-organize all the existing GIS data, so as to solve the problem in GIR based on Web, such as the differences in grammar, structure and semantic, then realize GIR based on ontology of place.Finally, we do an experiment on comparing the two retrieval modes between that based on keywords and based on ontology of place, which validates some of the latter's advantages.