Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Ontology-Based Discovering of Geographic
Databases Content
Ammar Mechouche, Nathalie Abadie, Emeric Prouteau,
Sébastien Mustière
Institut Géographique National
Laboratoire COGIT
73 Avenue de Paris
94160 Saint-Mandé, France
Nathalie-f.abadie@ign.fr
Abstract
Nowadays, the amount of geographic data is permanently increasing. One
key issue to take advantage of these data is to be able to evaluate their
fitness for use and their complexity. We describe in this paper a system
enabling a user to discover the content of geographic databases based on a
formalization of their specifications, i.e. enabling the user to discover
which entities of interest are represented in a given database, and how they
are represented. The system uses a global 'domain' ontology describing
the topographic real world entities, which can be queried by the user to
express his/her needs. Some local (or application) ontologies are used to
formalize the content of database specifications. They are annotated with
concepts from the global ontology. The described system is implemented
as a web application and includes a web mapping solution for the
visualization of data samples.
1- Context and objectives
Since the advent of Geographic Information Systems (
GIS
) we can observe
their growing importance both in terms of data acquisition, geo-localized
applications or spatial data dissemination (Craglia et al. 2008). This
growth allows various domains such as urban planning, environment,
