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You are in Geoinformatics Creative Commons Resources :: Geospatial Ontology :: ISAO 2016
This short course is part of the 2016 International School for Applied Ontology.
Ontologies of the geographic world are important to allow the sharing of geographic data among different communities of users. A geo-ontology provides a description of geographical entities, which can be conceptualised in two different views of the world. The field view considers spatial data to be a set of continuous distributions. The object view conceives the world as occupied by discrete, identifiable entities. Objects and fields are not merely located in space, they are tied intrinsically to space. However, to properly represent changes, it is also necessary to describe concepts that convey the dynamics of spatial phenomena. The notions of events and processes are useful to explicitly include the temporal dimension. The lectures present a general overview of the main trends in Geospatial Ontology, discussing the concepts of objects, fields and events for representation of geographical phenomena. The course also highlights the specific area of land use and land cover ontology, an area of considerable importance for geospatial ontology research.
Lecture: Geographical Objects
Further Reading and Questions:
Lecture: Fields
Suggested Reading: Remarks and Questions
Lecture: Dynamic Spatial Ontologies
Further Reading and Questions to Ponder: “Dynamic Spatial Ontology”
Assignment 3: An essay on “Dynamic Spatial Ontology” (optional)
Lecture: Land Use and Land Cover Ontology
Assignment 4: An essay on Land Use and Land Cover Ontologies” (optional)
Lecture: Axiomatic Theory