Specification of a framework for semantic annotation of geospatial data on the web

ABSTRACT

The Web is a huge repository of geospatial information (GI), distributed all over the world. Efficient retrieval of this information is a key factor in planning and decision-making in a variety of domains. However, the proposed standards and specifications for data annotation and exchanging enable only syntactic interoperability. Semantic heterogeneity still presents challenges for GI retrieval. One possible approach to tackle these problems is to elicit knowledge by means of semantic annotations, based on multiple ontologies. This work describes a framework to support management of semantic annotations for digital content on the Web, for agricultural planning and monitoring. This will help end-users (agronomers, farmers, Earth scientists) to work cooperatively in developing integrated practices for land management. Content to be annotated in this context includes, for instance, satellite images, sensor data temporal series (e.g., from ground sensors or weather stations), and all kinds of textual data files.

REFERENCES

• 1: Maristella Agosti , Nicola Ferro, A formal model of annotations of digital content, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.26 n.1, p.3-es, November 2007 [doi>10.1145/1292591.1292594]
• 2: K. A. V. Borges. Using an Urban Place Ontology to Recognize and Extract Geospatial Evidence on the Web (in portuguese). PhD thesis, UFMG, 2006.
• 3: A. C. P. L. F. Carvalho et al. Grand challenges in computer science research in brazil -- 2006--2016 workshop report. Technical report, Brazilian Computer Society, May 2006.
• 4: A. Chakravarthy, F. Ciravegna, and V. Lanfranchi. AKTiveMedia: Cross-media document annotation and enrichment. In Fifteenth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006) - Poster, 2006.
• 5: Jaudete Daltio , Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Aondê: An ontology Web service for interoperability across biodiversity applications, Information Systems, v.33 n.7-8, p.724-753, November, 2008 [doi>10.1016/j.is.2008.02.001]
• 6: Max J. Egenhofer, Toward the semantic geospatial web, Proceedings of the 10th ACM international symposium on Advances in geographic information systems, p.1-4, November 08-09, 2002, McLean, Virginia, USA [doi>10.1145/585147.585148]
• 7: FGDC. FGDC Geospatial Metadata, 1998.
• 8: Renato Fileto , Ling Liu , Calton Pu , Eduardo Delgado Assad , Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, POESIA: An ontological workflow approach for composing Web services in agriculture, The VLDB Journal — The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases, v.12 n.4, p.352-367, November 2003 [doi>10.1007/s00778-003-0103-3]
• 9: Thomas R. Gruber, A translation approach to portable ontology specifications, Knowledge Acquisition, v.5 n.2, p.199-220, June 1993 [doi>10.1006/knac.1993.1008]
• 10: Siegfried Handschuh , Steffen Staab, Authoring and annotation of web pages in CREAM, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on World Wide Web, May 07-11, 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA [doi>10.1145/511446.511506]
• 11: L. Hollink, G. Schreiber, J. Wielemaker, and B. Wielinga. Semantic annotation of image collections. In Workshop on Knowledge Markup and Semantic Annotation - KCAP'03, 2003.
• 12: C. Jones, A. Abdelmoty, D. Finch, G. Fu, and S. Vaid. The SPIRIT spatial search engine: Architecture, ontologies and spatial indexing. In Geographic Information Science: Third International Conference, Gi Science 2004, pages 125--139, Adelphi, Md, USA, October 2004.
• 13: E. Klien. A rule-based strategy for the semantic annotation of geodata. Transactions in GIS, 11(3):437--452, 2007.
• 14: A. A. Kondo, C. B. Medeiros, E. Bacarin, and E. R. M. Madeira. Traceability in food for supply chains. In 3rd International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST), pages 121--127. INSTICC, March 2007. Barcelona, Spain.
• 15: C. G. N. Macário, C. B. Medeiros, and R. D. A. Senra. The webmaps project: challenges and results (in portuguese). In IX Brazilian Symposium on GeoInformatics - Geoinfo 2007, pages 239--250, 2007.
• 16: Leonardo E. Mariote , Claudia Bauzer Medeiros , Ickjai Lee, Diagnosing Similarity of Oscillation Trends in Time Series, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops, p.643-648, October 28-31, 2007 [doi>10.1109/ICDMW.2007.33]
• 17: C. B. Medeiros , J. Perez-Alcazar , L. Digiampietri , G. Z. Pastorello, Jr. , A. Santanche , R. S. Torres , E. Madeira , E. Bacarin, WOODSS and the Web: annotating and reusing scientific workflows, ACM SIGMOD Record, v.34 n.3, September 2005 [doi>10.1145/1084805.1084810]
• 18: OGC. Geography Markup Language. The Open Geospatial Consortium, 2007. <http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml>.
• 19: Ontotext Lab. The KIM Platform: Knowledge & Information Management. 2007. <<http://www.ontotext.com/kim/index.html>.
• 20: Lawrence Reeve , Hyoil Han, Survey of semantic annotation platforms, Proceedings of the 2005 ACM symposium on Applied computing, March 13-17, 2005, Santa Fe, New Mexico [doi>10.1145/1066677.1067049]
• 21: Nigel Shadbolt , Tim Berners-Lee , Wendy Hall, The Semantic Web Revisited, IEEE Intelligent Systems, v.21 n.3, p.96-101, May 2006 [doi>10.1109/MIS.2006.62]
• 22: M. I. F. Souza, A. D. Santos, M. F. Moura, and M. D. R. Alves. Embrapa information agency: an application for information organizing and knowledge management. In II Digital Libraries Workshop, pages 51--56, Brazil, 2006. (in portuguese).
• 23: A. Tsalgatidou , G. Athanasopoulos , M. Pantazoglou , C. Pautasso , T. Heinis , R. Grønmo , Hjørdis Hoff , Arne-Jørgen Berre , M. Glittum , S. Topouzidou, Developing scientific workflows from heterogeneous services, ACM SIGMOD Record, v.35 n.2, p.22-28, June 2006 [doi>10.1145/1147376.1147380]
• 24: W3C and IRIA. Amaya, W3C's Editor/Browser. W3C, 2007. <http://www.w3.org/Amaya/>.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications
          Subjects: Spatial databases and GIS

Keywords:
geospatial data, geospatial standards, semantic annotation, semantic interoperability