NeoGeoVoCampOctober2009

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Mailing list[edit]

http://groups.google.com/group/neogeo-semantic-web-vocabs

Homepage[edit]

http://sites.google.com/site/neogswvocs/

What[edit]

The 1st ever NeoGeoVoCamp. A what??? After attending the Sunnyvale and NYC 2009 VoCamps and truly enjoying the open and engaging format VoCamps offer, I've decided to "bend" the rules somewhat and host a domain vocabulary-oriented VoCamp (A DoVoCamp?). In this case, the VoCamp will focus on a set of "sweetspot", lightweight geospatial ontologies for NeoGeography and Linked Open Data. Its goal is to foster discussions and INITIAL vocabulary development/extensions around a suite of small, core geo/temporal/event ontologies for a NeoGeo Semantic Web, which lies at the nebulous intersection of the Semantic Web, Social Web, Geo Web and Mobile Web. Such a set of ontologies should be simple enough for Semantic Web developers without a deep knowledge of GIS to adequately utilize spatial information and vice versa simple enough for geo hackers without a deep knowledge of the Semantic Web to utilize RDF. Theoretically :)

In the case of NeoGeo VoCamp, I hope by applying a domain constraint to the topic discussions it will help focus a broad topic area such as geography. However, in the open spirit of VoCamp, these geo topics of discussion are up for discussion! Please list any NeoGeo topics you'd like to discuss under the Topics section below.

When[edit]

30th - 31st October 2009

Day 1 (Friday 30th October 2009)[edit]

10:00am - 5:00pm

Day 2 (Saturday 31st October 2009)[edit]

9:00 - 5:00

Programme[edit]

See VoCampDCOctober2009

Where[edit]

The folks at VoCampDCOctober2009 have kindly offered to merge NeoGeoVoCamp with their VoCamp which is going to be held in LJ-119 in the historic Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress. Thanks to the organizers of VoCampDCOctober2009! 

 Jefferson Building
 The Library of Congress
 101 Independence Ave, SE
 Washington, DC 20540
 map

Topics[edit]

Here people can suggest vocabularies and other things to work on. Just put a topic in the list and other people can put their names behind it to indicate interest in that topic.

Vocabularies, etc. I want to to work on[edit]

  • GeoNames/WOEIDs/Toponyms Discussion
  • GeoRSS Discussion
  • Linking geo/events/time with LOD (to include LGD-LinkedGeoData)
  • Spatial in SPARQL/GeoSPARQL
  • MobileWeb/SocialNetwork/GeoWeb/Semantic Web Intersection & Architecture
  • Requirements for development and sustainment of NeoGeo models and open source tools
  • Basic topological predicates (e.g. those specified in the OGC simple features based on RCC8 and the 9-intersection model)
  • Spatial Annotation (of raster, text + other media via geotagging/RDFa/Microformats/SCOT/MOAT, etc.)
  • Gazetteers and Feature Type Ontologies

How Much[edit]

The VoCamp event itself is free, although participants will need to pay for their own travel, accommodation and food.

Who[edit]

Organisers[edit]

  • Todd Pehle (firstname underscore lastname atyahoo dotcom)

Participants[edit]

Would like to, but can't[edit]

  • Dalia Varanka
  • Willem Robert van Hage
  • Eric Sword

Outcomes & Topics[edit]

Geographic Feature Type Ontology[edit]

Geographic Feature Type Ontology

Mailing List and Web Site[edit]

[Mailing list

[web site]

Shapes, GeoSpatial Relationships, GeoVocabulary[edit]

[RCC 8]

Ontology draft: http://knoodl.com/ui/groups/Geo/vocab/SpatialRelations - Please comment on the ontology draft in Knoodle!

TODO[edit]

  • Namespace - ideas (how about http://geovocab.org/ )
  • own domain? (geoontology.org, spatialontology.org etc?) containing introduction, tutorials, publication of ontology
  • decide on one of the two ontology ideas: contact W3C and NeoGeo ontology creators
  • mailing list?

Restrictions of Ontology[edit]

  • limited to 2D (possible 2.5D)
  • possibly limited to WGS84?
  • limited to "static" objects, i.e. stored geometrical representation of an object is assumed to be the current one

Ontology Idea 1[edit]

  • a class "SpatialObject" for representing everything with a spatial extend
  • a property "hasGeometry" or "where" pointing to the geometry of the object
  • subclasses of Geometry: Point, Line, Polygon, Circle, Box
  • topological properties from Geometry to another Geometry

Ontology Idea 2[edit]

  • reuse of class SpatialThing (which should actually be called GeoSpatialThing) in W3C Geo Simple
  • reuse of lat/long (in case the object is not a point, e.g. a circle, lat and long are used for a "reference point" in the object)
  • no separate Geometry class
  • topological properties from SpatialThing to another SpatialThing
  • property "contains" is used for spatial things consisting of several geometries

Open Questions[edit]

  • whether include a notion of "distance" in the ontology (probably useful)
  • How can we ask questions like "Give me all spatial things located within x meters around a particular spatial thing?", e.g. "Give me all historical sights located at most 1000 meters from a bicycle path."
  • How can we distinguish the "direct" topological relations from their full transitive closure? Given an object I may want all objects contained in it under the constrain that none of those objects should contain one of the others. For instance, given the United States, I want all objects contained in it (all states, forests, mountains, rivers etc.), but not e.g. single buildings.
  • Related to the previous question, should it be able to order results returned from topological queries e.g. by their size? How would that be accomplished in SPARQL?
  • ontology can be used in many data sets including LinkedGeoData, DBpedia, UK and US government data => but it is not clear which free and scalable tools can be used to actually perform spatial queries on these (large) knowledge bases

Examples[edit]

Assume we want to represent a country consisting of two islands, which are modelled as a polygon and a circle, in RDF/OWL.

Ontology 1: 

 Country rdfs:subClassOf SpatialObject (assuming countries stand for real countries on earth)
 country1 rdf:type Country
 country1 hasGeometry geom1
 geom1 rdf:type Polygon
 geom1 posList "45.256 -110.45 46.46 -109.48 43.84 -109.86 75.236 -118.95"
 country1 hasGeometry geom2
 geom2 rdf:type Circle
 geom2 centre "73.738 -36.938"
 geom2 radius "281902"

Ontology 2: 

 Country rdfs:subClassOf SpatialThing (assuming countries stand for real countries on earth)
 country1 rdf:type Country
 country1 contains island1_1
 island1_1 polygon "45.256 -110.45 46.46 -109.48 43.84 -109.86 75.236 -118.95"
 country1 contains island1_2
 island1_2 circle "73.738 -36.938 281902"
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