Information integration and semantic heterogeneity are not trivial tasks. An integrated view must be able to describe various heterogeneous data sources and its interrelation to obtain shared conceptualizations. In this paper, we propose an approach to make a conceptualization of the real world based on conceptual schemas, which are used to generate a semantic description of the geospatial doma...

Liability in data, products, and services related to geographic information systems, spatial data infrastructure, location based services and web mapping services, is complicated by the complexities and uncertainties in liability for information system products and services generally, as well as by legal theory uncertainties surrounding liability for maps. Each application of geospatial technol...

Imprecision in spatial data arises from the granularity or resolution at which observations of phenomena are made, and from the limitations imposed by computational representations, processing and presentational media. Precision is an important component of spatial data quality, and a key to appropriate integration of collections of data sets. Previous work of the author provides a theoretical ...

The selection, acquisition, and management of digital data are now part and parcel of the work librarians handle on a day-to-day basis. While much thought goes into this work, little consideration may be given to the long-term preservation of the collected data. Digital data cannot be retained for the future in the same way paper-based materials have traditionally been handled. Specifi c issues...

Semantic interoperability is needed to support meaningful data exchanges in distributed environments such as ad hoc networks of geospatial databases and geospatial web services. Even with the recent increasing popularity of ontologies to capture semantics of geospatial resources, semantics of geospatial data are often implicit or too weak to support meaningful exchanges. In this paper, we argue...

As the acquisition and use of information are costly, the optimal use of information involves economic tradeoffs. Therefore, valuing information is attracting research and thought. However, till now, little attention has been paid to the geospatial information domain, which is increasingly coming to the attention of decision makers seeking to improve decision models by considering spatio-tempor...

Semantics of geospatial information is necessary to ensure its interoperability and correct usage. Geospatial ontologies enable encoding such knowledge and enable reasoning mechanisms to estimate interoperability. The framework of interoperability for geospatial information using ontologies, presented in this paper, supports (i) building of ontologies, (ii) semi-automated, ontology-based mappin...

Much of the information that underpins the challenges facing society today—such as terrorist activities, global environmental change, and natural disasters—is geospatial in nature. An everyday example of key geospatial data is the location of a cell phone user who has dialed 911 in an emergency. In terrorist situations, the origins and destinations of phone calls, travel patterns of individuals...