Mappings For Cognitive Semantic Interoperability

Semantic interoperability for geographic information and services has been a main research area within Geographic Information Science. Success in solving semantic interoperability problems has been limited though, because many efforts are based on so-called realist semantics approaches. Considering the fact that geographic information is eventually used by people, it is necessary to account for people’s (geographic) concepts and their semantic relation to different system views of the same concepts. In this paper we propose to tackle the problem of Cognitive Semantic Interoperability for geographic information by defining mappings between conceptual spaces. Such spaces can be utilized to formally represent the meanings of concepts within geometrical structures, both from a system’s and a user’s perspective. We present a formal definition of possible mappings— projections and transformations—and the occurring losses of information. A wayfinding service scenario is used to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the approach.