TY - JOUR
T1 - Semantic granularity in ontology-driven geographic information systems
AU - Fonseca, Frederico
AU - Egenhofer, Max
AU - Davis, Clodoveu
AU - Câmara, Gilberto
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF grant numbers SBR-9700465 and IIS-9970123, NASA/EPSCoR fellowship grant numbers 99-58 and EP-02-02 # 2001516, and an ESRI graduate fellowship while Frederico Fonseca was at The University of Maine. Max Egenhofer’s research is further supported by NSF grants IRI-9613646, IIS-9970123, and EPS-9983432; by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency under grant numbers NMA202-97-1-1023 and NMA201-00-1-2009; by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH, under grant number 1 R 01 ES09816-01, and by a contract with Lockheed Martin. Clodoveu Davis thanks CNPq, a Brazilian governmental entity that fosters scientific and technologic development, for their support under grant number 680243/00-3. Gilberto Câmara’s research has been partially supported by a joint CNPq (Brazil)/NSF (USA) grant on “Computational Issues in Interoperability in GIS” (CNPq grant number 480322/99).
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - The integration of information of different kinds, such as spatial and alphanumeric at different levels of detail, is a challenge. While a solution is not reached, it is widely recognized that the need to integrate information is so pressing that it does not matter if detail is lost, as long as integration is achieved. This paper shows the potential for information retrieval at different levels of granularity inside the framework of information systems based on ontologies. Ontologies are theories that use a specific vocabulary to describe entities, classes, properties and functions related to a certain view of the world. The use of an ontology, translated into an active information system component, leads to ontology-driven information systems and, in the specific case of GIS, leads to what we call ontology-driven geographic information systems.
AB - The integration of information of different kinds, such as spatial and alphanumeric at different levels of detail, is a challenge. While a solution is not reached, it is widely recognized that the need to integrate information is so pressing that it does not matter if detail is lost, as long as integration is achieved. This paper shows the potential for information retrieval at different levels of granularity inside the framework of information systems based on ontologies. Ontologies are theories that use a specific vocabulary to describe entities, classes, properties and functions related to a certain view of the world. The use of an ontology, translated into an active information system component, leads to ontology-driven information systems and, in the specific case of GIS, leads to what we call ontology-driven geographic information systems.
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U2 - 10.1023/A:1015808104769
DO - 10.1023/A:1015808104769
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0036079940
SN - 1012-2443
VL - 36
SP - 121
EP - 151
JO - Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
JF - Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
IS - 1-2
ER -