Ontology of Geographic Representation (OGR) Kejin Cui kejincui@buffalo.edu Department of Geography University at Buffalo

Introduction Existing research on spatial data models Field & Object Definition(Goodchild 1992) Geo-atom (Goodchild 2007) Object-based Field (Cova 2002) Field-based Object (Yuan 2001) Object-oriented Representation (Bian 2007) General Field (Liu 2008) Ontological analysis need to be explored

Introduction Existing research on geographic ontology Geographic category (Smith 2001) Different landforms (Smith 2003) Topography (Mark 2004) It is necessary for geographic ontology to include object and field geographic representation. (Galton 2003)

Introduction Existing research uses UML (United Modeling Language) to descript Object & Field.

Field and Object

Field and Object: Spatial Cognition

Field & Object Models Geo-field: Continuous Geo-object: Discrete

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

Two Debates in OGR Object & Field Vector & Raster Entity  Continuant  Independent Continuant  Immaterial Entity  Spatial Region Vector & Raster The same placement as SOFTWARE and DRAMATIC ART Entity  Continuant  Dependent Continuant  Generically Dependent Continuant

Primitives: Geo-atoms (Goodchild, 2007) Definition: <x, Z, Z(x)>

Geo-field

6 categories of geo-fields (Goodchild,1993)

Geo-object Four basic elements: Point, Line, Area, Spatio-Temporal_Object 3 dimensions to describe dynamic geo-objects (Goodchild,2007): Movement: Moving VS Stationary Geometry: Dynamic VS Static Internal Structure: Evolving VS Rigid

Geo-object (Goodchild 2007)

The relationship between geo-field and geo-object Object-based Fields (Cova and Goodchild, 2002) Mapping each point in a field to an object Example: Viewshed analysis Field-based Objects (Yuan, 1999) Representing the internal variation of the property Z in a geo-object Example: Hurricane, wildfire

General structure Data models Geographic entities Geographic events

Linking geographic entities and data models New object property: is_represented_by

Ontology on representing geographic events Example: Hurricane State  Event  Process

Ontology of Agent-based Modeling

Ontology of Agent-based Modeling and Its Spatial Data Models

Future work Agent-based Modeling (ABM) Ontology Geographic Representation

Future Work Using ontology to integrate ABM and geographic representation is a new direction How an agent’s behavior affects its characteristics of geographic representation? How the interactions between two agents affect the interactions between their corresponding data model? How will these relationships change the result of geographic process analysis?