Ontology-Based Geographic Data Set Integration

In order to develop a system to propagate updates we investigate the semantic and spatial relationships between independently produced geographic data sets of the same region (data set integration). The goal of this system is to reduce operator intervention in update operations between corresponding (semantically similar) geographic object instances. Crucial for this reduction is certainty about the semantic similarity of different object representations. In this paper we explore a framework for ontology-based geographic data set integration, an ontology being a collection of shared concepts. Components of this formal approach are an ontology for topographic mapping (a domain ontology), an ontology for every geographic data set involved (the application ontologies), and abstraction rules (or capture criteria). Abstraction rules define at the class level the relationships between domain ontology and application ontology. Using these relationships, it is possible to locate semantic similarity at the object instance level with methods from computational geometry (like overlay operations). The components of the framework are formalized in the Prolog language, illustrated with a fictitious example, and tested on a practical example.