Reasoning with spatial plans on the semantic web

ABSTRACT

There are several reasons why citizens, businesses and civil servants need access to regulations. Unfortunately, traditional approaches that aim to provide this access fall short, especially in the area of spatial planning. Fairly straight-forward questions such as "where will I be able to perform this kind of activity" or "is this activity allowed here" are not answered automatically by current systems. There are many attempts to create one-stop-shop front-ends to eGovernment, but these are seldom built from the perspective of the user.

This paper describes our work on what we call a 'Legal Atlas'. Using various Semantic Web technologies we combine distributed geospatial data, textual data and controlled vocabularies in order to support users in answering questions such as those mentioned above.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.4 Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods
          Subjects: Semantic networks

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.3 Deduction and Theorem Proving

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.5 LEGAL ASPECTS OF COMPUTING
      K.5.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design

Keywords:
Google maps, OWL, SKOS, law, legal assessment, legal atlas, norm, ontology, reasoning, semantic web, spatial planning