Geographic Ontologies: Survey and Challenges

Abstract

Te goal of this paper is to present some concepts concerning geographic ontologies and especially the use of spatial relations. Ontologies can be defned as a kind of semantic networks for the description of the real world; they are essentially graphs between concepts linked by relations such as is_a, has_a, part_whole. But the scope of geographic ontologies is to describe not only the geographic features, but also their spatial relationships. Usually, only topological relations are defned, but other spatial and geographic relations must be considered as well. Afer a short presentation of ontologies in general, the characteristics of geographic ontologies will be detailed. Finally, some future challenges shall be outlined.