Semantic Similarity based on Weighted Ontology - Geographical Information Systems: Trends and Technologies - page 287

CHAPTER 10
Semantic Similarity based on
Weighted Ontology
Elaheh Pourabbas
Introduction
Semantic similarity has been the focus of interest in linguistics (Jiang and
Conrath 1997; Tanga and Zheng 2006), biomedical studies (Wang et al.
2007; Guzzi et al. 2012), and artifi cial intelligence (Resnik 1999; Gabrilovich
and Markovitch 2007). Essentially, they have been conceived to compare
concepts, to facilitate searching through ontologies and to improve matching
and aligning ontologies (Ehric 2007; Jean-Marya et al. 2009).
In the context of Geographic Information Science ( GIScience ), similarity
methods have been used to measure the degree of semantic interoperability
between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or geographic data. With
the rapid development of Internet technology and the emergence of the
Semantic Geospatial Web, the computation of semantic similarity studies
play a core role in understanding and handling semantic heterogeneity and,
hence, in enabling interoperability between services and data repositories on
the Web (Sheth 1999; Egenhofer 2002). The role of such methods in dealing
with approximate query answering and reasoning as the basis for semantic
retrieval and integration is growing in importance (Uitermark et al. 1999;
Lutz and Klien 2006; Baglioni et al. 2009; Janowicz et al. 2011).
In GISs, ontology as a kind of information science research methodology
was mainly introduced to solve the sharing, integration, as well as the
interoperability (Uitermark et al. 1999; Buccella et al. 2009; Buccella et
National Research Council, Institute of Systems Analysis and Computer Science “Antonio
Ruberti”, Viale Manzoni 30, 00185 Rome, Italy.