The role of ontology in improving gazetteer interaction

Authors: Janowicz, K.; Kessler, C.

Source: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 22, Number 10, 2008 , pp. 1129-1157(29)

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $56.94 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

Gazetteers are more than basic place name directories containing names and locations for named geographic places. Most of them contain additional information, including a categorization of gazetteer entries using a typing scheme. This paper focuses on the nature of these categorization schemes. We argue that gazetteers can benefit from an ontological approach to typing schemes, providing a formalization that will better support gazetteer applications, maintenance, interoperability, and semi-automatic feature annotation. We discuss the process of developing such an ontology as a modification of an existing feature type thesaurus; the difficulties in mapping from thesauri to ontologies are described in detail. To demonstrate the benefits of a categorization based on ontologies, a new gazetteer Web (and programming) interface is introduced and the impact on gazetteer interoperability is discussed.

Keywords: Semantic similarity; Ontology; Gazetteer research

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13658810701851461

Affiliations: 1: Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Munster, Germany

Publication date: 2008-01-01

More about this publication?