Ontology based approach of semantic information integration

In order to solve the problem of semantic heterogeneity in information integration, an ontology based semantic information integration （OSII） model and its logical framework are proposed. The OSII adopts the hybrid ontology approach and uses OWL （web ontology language） as the ontology language. It obtains unified views from multiple sources by building mappings between local ontologies and the global ontology. A tree- based multi-strategy ontology mapping algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is achieved by the following four steps： pre-processing, name mapping, subtree mapping and remedy mapping. The advantages of this algorithm are： mapping in the compatible datatype categories and using heuristic rules can improve mapping efficiency; both linguistic and structural similarity are used to improve the accuracy of the similarity calculation; an iterative remedy is adopted to obtain correct and complete mappings. A challenging example is used to illustrate the validity of the algorithm. The OSII is realized to effectively solve the problem of semantic heterogeneity in information integration and to implement interoperability of multiple information sources.

Geospatial Semantic Interoperability Based on Ontology

In GIS field, great varieties of information from different domains are involved in order to solve actual problems. But usually spatial information is stored in diverse spatial databases, manipulated by different GIS platforms. Semantic heterogeneity is caused due to the distinctions of conception explanations among various GIS implements. It will result in the information obtaining and understanding gaps for spatial data sharing and usage. An ontology-based model for spatial information semantic interoperability is put forward after the comprehensive review of progress in ontology theory, methodology and application research in GIS domain.

Research on Development of Agricultural Geographic Information Ontology

This paper first analyzes the reason that agricultural geographic information gives rise to semantic heterogeneity and solution thereof. Although OWL （web ontology language） is the standard of ontology representation language in semantic web, it is insufficient in representing spatial characteristics, especially spatial relationship. Consequently it is pointed out to build geo-ontology by virtue of three theories such as mereology, location theory and topology in this paper. This paper introduces mereology, location theory and topology, and then discusses how to adopt these three theories to build geo-ontology. The outcome of experiment shows that solution put forward by this paper is feasible.

Construction of Domain Web Classification Ontology Based on Suggested Upper Merged Ontology

Aiming at the problem of merging heterogeneous semantic taxonomy emerged in Web information integration, a method of building Web classification ontology （WCO） has been proposed. A WCO that is logically consistent with the suggested upper merged ontology （SUMO） is defined, together with axioms needed to classify Web pages. WCO can be used as a foundation of merging heterogeneous semantic taxonomy, and could be used to support Web information integration and classification based Web information retrieval.

Geospatial data ontology:the semantic foundation of geospatial data integration and sharing

Effective integration and wide sharing of geospatial data is an important and basic premise to facilitate the research and applications of geographic information science.However,the semantic heterogeneity of geospatial data is a major problem that significantly hinders geospatial data integration and sharing.Ontologies are regarded as a promising way to solve semantic problems by providing a formalized representation of geographic entities and relationships between them in a manner understandable to machines.Thus,many efforts have been made to explore ontology-based geospatial data integration and sharing.However,there is a lack of a specialized ontology that would provide a unified description for geospatial data.In this paper,with a focus on the characteristics of geospatial data,we propose a unified framework for geospatial data ontology,denoted GeoDataOnt,to establish a semantic foundation for geospatial data integration and sharing.First,we provide a characteristics hierarchy of geospatial data.Next,we analyze the semantic problems for each characteristic of geospatial data.Subsequently,we propose the general framework of GeoDataOnt,targeting these problems according to the characteristics of geospatial data.GeoDataOnt is then divided into multiple modules,and we show a detailed design and implementation for each module.Key limitations and challenges of GeoDataOnt are identified,and broad applications of GeoDataOnt are discussed.