Spatial Reasoning with Place Information on the Semantic Web

Geographical referencing of data and resources on the Web has become prevalent. Discovering and linking this information poses eminent research challenges to the geospatial semantic web, with regards to the representation and manipulation of information on geographic places. Towards addressing these challenges, this work explores the potential of the current semantic web languages and tools. In particular, an integrated logical framework of rules and ontologies, using current W3C standards, is assessed for modeling geospatial ontologies of place and for encoding both symbolic and geometric references to place locations. Spatial reasoning is incorporated in the framework to facilitate the deduction of implicit spatial relations and for expressing spatial integrity constraints. The logical framework is extended with geo-computation engines that offer more effective manipulation of geometric information. Example data sets mined from web resources are used to demonstrate and evaluate the framework, offering insights to its potentials and limitations.