1. A geo-ontology to support the semantic integration of geoinformation from the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Authors: Paulo J. A. Gimenez, Mastering Asterio Kiyoshi Tanaka, DSc Fernanda Baião, DSc Presentation

2. Contextualization Increasingly demand for the availability of integrated geoinformation:  The profusion of geoinformation.  The diversity of providers.  Over 30 years of evolution and growth of the geospatial content. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (INDE) :  To provide an effective and efficient access and availability of spatial data.  Governments and public entities engaged. Web 2.0 technologies:  Mature and available. The necessity for formalization, representation and integration of the geoinformation at the semantic level: still open !!! [Diaz ET AL 2012] 2

3. The Challenge of Geo-Semantic Interoperability (by SDI dimension) and Integration (by Data dimension). Main Levels of Interoperability  Syntactic: how geographic objects will move among institutions and these to society?  Approaches from ISO, OGC and OASIS patterns and directives.  Semantic: the choice of an ontology or use of semantic resources to describe geographic objects and their interrelationships. Main Geospatial heterogeneity issues  Geospatiality: features and geometries of features; geographic and non- geographic relationships; systems and coordinate; scales conflicts;  Geo-semantics: discernment of a feature; spatial reasoning and representation dissonance. 3

4. Goal of this proposal Present creation of a geo-ontology an approach to the creation of a geo-ontology geographic objects for representing geographic objects INDE within the context of NSDI (INDE) from the associated standards discoveryand enabling the discovery and integration of geoinformation integration of geoinformation. 4 ET-EDGV Feature concepts ET-ADGV Feature constructions MGB Profile Feature/ Collection metadata BNGB Geographical names

5. The Brazilian Context: “INDE” 5 The NSDI (INDE)  Arrange of SDI in different levels and providers.  Cartographic and basic geoinformation structured by ET-EDGV standard.  Follows e-PING architecture, references the OGC standards and adds owned standards:  MGB Profile (Brazilian Geographic Metadata Profile), based on ISO 19115:2003.  ET-EDGV (Technical Specification for Geographic Vector Data Structure). [CONCAR 2010]

6. The Brazilian Geographic Space 6 Structure representing the Brazilian geographic space:  Vector data  Represents the geo-objects abstraction vision.  Defined by the ET-EDGV.  Only for geospatial data reference Topographic Systematic Terrestrial Mapping.  Matrix data  Represents the Geo-fields abstraction vision.  Will be defined by the ET-PCDG (Technical Specification for products of Geospatial Datasets).  Metadata  Promote documentation, integration and deployment of geospatial data.  Defined by the MGB Profile.  Offered in two flavors: summarized and full version.  Doesn’t cover services (ISO 19119) and the implementation (ISO 19139). And geographic names structure:  In the reality still not a standard. ET-BNGB planned to exist.  In a practical reality exist based on BNGB (Brazilian Bank Geographical Names) implementation.

7. Geo-ontology basic concepts Geo-ontology = {C, R, A, X, I}, where: C (concepts) represents concept set of geographic object; R (relations) is a relation set and it mainly describes relation set among concepts; A (attribute) shows attribute’s set of geographic objects; X (axioms) is a lot of axioms and it is a constraint rules among the concepts, relation and attribute; I (instances) is a set of definition about instances. [Wang, Li and Song 2008] 7

8. Methodological approach used Combining existing methodologies from the literature:  The Simple Knowledge-Engineering Methodology [Noy and McGuinness 2001].  Simplicity and efficiency.  Uses a set of competency questions (CQ) to determine the scope of the ontology.  The approach of Wang ET AL [Wang, Li and Song 2008]  Uses the "Concept lattice“:  Sets of objects and attributes from geographic concepts that represent the main aspects of the geospatial domain: is-a, kind-of, part-whole, dependency, instantiation and member relationships, as well as the relationship between attributes and concepts.  The work from Bishr [Bishr 2008]  Specifically addresses the geographical domain.  Establishes the elements that must be observed during the construction of the geo-ontology concepts. 8

9. Methodological approach used Following the steps and directives: 9 Simple Knowledge-EngineeringComplementing with Wang’s approach Considering main elements in Bishr’s work  Uses Competency Questions to define the scope  Confirm the scope of geo-ontology  The context: establish the set of assertions and conditions considering a restricted vocabulary and spatial-temporal perspectives  Determine the domain and scope  Reuse existing ontologies  List important terms in the ontology  List ontological properties for the geographical concept  Identity criteria: establish sufficient conditions to determine the identity of a concept, organize the taxonomy of concepts and persist in time.  Spatial reference system.  Mereotopology.  Limits: “bona-fide“ and "fiat".  The shape and size.  Define classes and class hierarchies  Ensure the relationship between geographical concepts  Define class properties  Collect concepts meaning, their attributes, images and instances  Define facets of these properties  Create instances  Build the prototype model / geospatial ontology system

10. The geo-ontology of INDE 10 Reuse and reference to known models of the geographical

11. Ontology for Geographical Names 11 The Geographic name or toponym standard allows the identification of a Geographic Feature or Accident. The toponymic phrase consists of two parts:  Generic term: the element on the geographical entity that receives the name.  Specific term: the element that distinguishes the identity of the geographic element. [IBGE 2010, Lima 2011 apud Dick 1990] The proposed ontology brings:  Correlation between term and toponyms.  Lists of generic terms (as proposed in [IBGE 2010] ).  Support for names denoting variation in gender (male x female) and number (plural x singular).  Alternative toponymic phrases for a particular geographical area.  Support for geographical names composed of multiple toponymic phrases.

12. Ontology for Geographical Names 12

13. Ontology for Brazilian Geographic Metadata Profile 13 Ontologies for geographic metadata add semantic meaning and relationship to describe the underlying data. [Di and Zhao 2008] The proposed ontology describes:  The basic characteristics for the representation of concepts defined in the MGB Profile and related to the “ISO 19115” ontology.  Sections and entities: as ontology classes.  Information and elements: as properties of classes or enumerated lists.  Same information elements shared among several sections with distinct terminology: as synonym relationships.  Cardinality restrictions mapped according to:

14. Ontology for Brazilian Geographic Metadata Profile 14

15. Ontology for Brazilian Geographic Domain 15 Based on the characteristics of geographic objects, spatial relationships and spatial primitives described in ET-EDGV.  The guidelines for the construction of each element and concept defined in ET-ADGV. The proposal ontology describes:  Classes and Relationship evaluated at the semantic level: as concepts based on class definitions and subtypes described.  Hierarchical classification of concepts: as the categories of ET-EDGV and classifications of geo-concepts proposed by Wang [Wang, Li and Song 2008].  The conceptual connection with the MGB Profile ontology.  Cardinality restrictions and Conditionality relations mapped according to:

16. Ontology for Brazilian Geographic Domain 16 *Partial sub-ontology

17. The Competency Questions validation 17 CQ1: Which conditions or characteristics are required by a Geographic name so that it addresses (identifies) a Geographic Feature? CQ2: Which conditions or characteristics are required by a Geographic Metadata so that it can be associated to a Geographic Name when identifying Geographic Feature? CQ3: How are the needs for cartographic generalization of geographic features be identified? CQ4: How can we identify the same object being represented as distinct cartographic features using different scales?

18. Application of geo-ontology proposed 18 The proposed geo-ontology must be considered to:  Integration of the associated metadata.  Correlation with the geographical names.  The alignment with the ontology that describes the INDE geo-services. The example scenario considers:  Integrated geoinformation is obtained from the basic geoinformation available in INDE.  Implementation of geo-processing to compose the integrated geo-information with its resulting metadata.

19. Related Works 19 Some studies have been made to define and specify the possible structuring of geo-ontologies sets to represent geographic space: [Bishr 2008],[Kun, Wang and Shuang-Yun 2005] and especially  Di and Zhao [Di and Zhao 2008] defines several levels of abstraction for geo-ontologies  Wang's approach [Wang, Li and Song 2008] uses the "Concept lattice"

20. Final Considerations 20 The main contribution of this proposal:  The proposed geo-ontology  The combination of concepts from the geographic names, metadata and geographic entities, providing support for analysis, applications and multifaceted uses. Secondary effects:  Intention to (re)open the discussion and the application prospect to maximize the use of basic geoinformation available in INDE. This work is essential part of study about semantic integration of several heterogeneous sources in the Brazilian context.  Much has to be done yet, to achieve a geo-ontology that can be accepted as the basis for this main study.

21. Final Considerations 21 Some future work in order to mature the geo-ontology proposed:  Extension to  cover the needs of Systematic Cadastral Mapping as soon as the ET-EDGV specifies them;  represent metadata of geo-services that are not yet covered by the MGB Profile and adaptation of coded values lists to reflect the national context;  geo-field in alignment to ET-PCDG under elaboration;  Creation of geographic quality control ontology for validation and verification of geospatial data quality for alignment with the future ET-CQPCDG specification;  Expansion of  Brazilian Geographic Domain Ontology to match ET-EDGV specification in a complete way, considering all rules and orientations in there;  Brazilian Geographic Names Ontology to treat the concepts associated with historical, ethnological and linguistic characteristics of toponyms. Implementation of a framework for semantic integration of spatial data from INDE using this proposed geo-ontology: under development.

22. A geo-ontology to support the semantic integration of geoinformation from the National Spatial Data Infrastructure paulo.gimenez@uniriotec.br tanaka@uniriotec.br fernanda.baiao@uniriotec.br Congratulations