Geographic ontology and interoperability

Abstract

In order to achieve information exchange between different geographic databases, it is necessary to develop suitable methods for formally defining and representing geographic knowledge. However, the plethora and diversity of data standards and terminologies representing different geographic concepts further complicate the problem of geographic information sharing and reuse. Τhe schematic but mainly the semantic differences which occur between heterogeneous geographic data and cause integration problems have led geographic information science towards ontological research. The methodology presented in this paper, focuses on fusing different geographic ontologies with more general top-level ontologies. For this reason, firstly, the relationship between ontologies and interoperability is discussed. Then, some distinguishing characteristics of geographic categories are analyzed, as well as the causes of the heterogeneities between them. Finally, a methodology for the formalization and integration of heterogeneous geographic ontologies in a single schema is proposed. The methodology consists of two procedures: Semantic Factoring and Formal Concept Analysis. In order to improve their effectiveness a complimentary procedure is used for the extraction of semantic information from concept (category) definitions.