Gilberto Camara (National Institute for Space Research, Brazil)

This short course is part of the 2016 International School for Applied Ontology.

Outline

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.

1. Describing socially-agreed entities: Geographical Objects

Lecture: Geographical Objects

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Questions to Ponder

2. Describing the natural world: Geographical fields

Lecture: Fields

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Questions to Ponder

3. Describing changes in our world: Dynamic spatial ontologies

Lecture: Dynamic Spatial Ontologies

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Questions to Ponder

4. Combining the natural and social perspectives: Land cover and land use ontologies

Lecture: Land Use and Land Cover Ontology

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Questions to Ponder

5. In Search of a General Theory for Geospatial Ontologies

Lecture: Axiomatic Theory

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