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In this article, an approach is presented for the representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. A set-theoretic approach is used for representing the topology of objects and underlying space by retaining connectivity... more
In this article, an approach is presented for the representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. A set-theoretic approach is used for representing the topology of objects and underlying space by retaining connectivity relationships between objects and space components in a structure, denoted, adjacency matrix. Spatial relations are represented by the intersection of components, and spatial reasoning is achieved by the application of general rules for the propagation of the intersection constraints between those components. The representation approach is general and can be adapted for different space resolutions and granularities of relations. The reasoning mechanism is simple and the spatial compositions are achieved in a finite definite number of steps, controlled by the complexity needed in the representation of objects and the granularity of the spatial relations required. The application of the method is presented over geometric structures that takes into accou...
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Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning are techniques for modeling and manipulating objects and relationships in space. Finding ways for defining the complete and sound (physically plausible) set of relationships between spatial... more
Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning are techniques for modeling and manipulating objects and relationships in space. Finding ways for defining the complete and sound (physically plausible) set of relationships between spatial objects is a prerequisite for the development and realization of qualitative representation and reasoning formalisms. Establishing the set of sound relationships is a complicated task especially when complex objects are considered. Hence, current approaches to qualitative representation and reasoning are limited to handling simple spatial objects. In this paper, we introduce a constraint-based approach to qualitative representation of topological relationships by defining a set of general soundness rules. The rules reduce the combinatorial set of relations produced by the method to the complete and physically possible ones. The rules are general and apply to objects of arbitrary complexity and together with the representation and reasoning formalis...
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In this paper we propose a general approach for reasoning in space. The approach is composed of a set of two general constraints to govern the spatial relationships between objects in space, and two rules to propagate relationships... more
In this paper we propose a general approach for reasoning in space. The approach is composed of a set of two general constraints to govern the spatial relationships between objects in space, and two rules to propagate relationships between those objects. The approach is based on a novel representation of the topology of the space as a connected set of components using a structure called adjacency matrix which can capture the topology of objects of different complexity in any space dimension. The formalism is used to explain spatial compositions resulting in indefinite and definite relations and it is shown to be applicable to reasoning in the temporal domain. The main contribution of the formalism is that it provides means for constructing composition tables for objects with arbitrary complexity in any space dimension. A new composition table between spatial objects of different types is presented. A major advantage of the method is that reasoning between objects of any complexity c...
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Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update. Hence, means of ensuring their integrity are crucial and needed to allow them to serve their purpose. This paper proposes a novel qualitative representation scheme to structure geoontology A-Boxes. The scheme captures two types of spatial relationships between geo-objects, namely, adjacency and orientation. It facilitates qualitative manipulation of the data and the efficient derivation of implicit information using spatial reasoning techniques.
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Research Interests:
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update. This paper proposes a novel qualitative representation scheme to structure geo-ontology A-Boxes. The scheme captures two types of
Research Interests:
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update. Hence, means of ensuring their integrity are crucial and needed to allow them to serve their purpose. This paper proposes a novel qualitative representation scheme to structure geoontology A-Boxes. The scheme captures two types of spatial relationships between geo-objects, namely, adjacency and orientation. It facilitates qualitative manipulation of the data and the efficient derivation of implicit information using spatial reasoning techniques.
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A unified framework is presented for representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. The approach builds on our earlier formalism for handling topological relations (B. El-Geresy, 1997; B. El-Geresy and A. Abdelmoty,... more
A unified framework is presented for representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. The approach builds on our earlier formalism for handling topological relations (B. El-Geresy, 1997; B. El-Geresy and A. Abdelmoty, 1997). It is shown how the formalism proposed is expressive enough to represent different types of relations in the orientation space, namely, extrinsic and intrinsic and to proximity relations. The approach proposed is applicable to objects of different types and can be used to reason over different space resolutions and granularities of relations. The main advantages of this work is that it offers a unified platform for handling different relations in the qualitative space which is a step towards developing general spatial reasoning engines for large spatial databases.
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Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geospatial-semantic web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update. This paper proposes a novel qualitative representation scheme to structure geo-ontology A-Boxes. The scheme captures two types of
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A unified framework is presented for representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. The approach builds on our earlier formalism for handling topological relations (B. El-Geresy, 1997; B. El-Geresy and A. Abdelmoty,... more
A unified framework is presented for representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations. The approach builds on our earlier formalism for handling topological relations (B. El-Geresy, 1997; B. El-Geresy and A. Abdelmoty, 1997). It is shown how the formalism proposed is expressive enough to represent different types of relations in the orientation space, namely, extrinsic and intrinsic and to proximity relations. The approach proposed is applicable to objects of different types and can be used to reason over different space resolutions and granularities of relations. The main advantages of this work is that it offers a unified platform for handling different relations in the qualitative space which is a step towards developing general spatial reasoning engines for large spatial databases.
Research Interests:
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geo-semantic Web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geo-semantic Web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update to ensure their currency. Hence, means of ensuring their integrity are crucial and needed to allow them to serve their purpose. This paper proposes the use of qualitative spatial reasoning as a tool to support the development of a geo-ontology management system. Spatial integrity rules based on uniform and hybrid spatial reasoning are proposed for the automatic derivation of spatial relationships and for maintaining the spatial consistency of the geographic data. A framework for the representation of and reasoning over geo-ontologies is presented using the Web ontology language OWL and its associated reasoning tools. Spatial reasoning and integrity rules are represented using a spatial rule engine extension...
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Research Interests:
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geo-semantic Web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a... more
Geo-ontologies have a key role to play in the development of the geo-semantic Web, with regard to facilitating the search for geographical information and resources. They normally hold large amounts of geographic information and undergo a continuous process of revision and update to ensure their currency. Hence, means of ensuring their integrity are crucial and needed to allow them to serve their purpose. This paper proposes the use of qualitative spatial reasoning as a tool to support the development of a geo-ontology management system. Spatial integrity rules based on uniform and hybrid spatial reasoning are proposed for the automatic derivation of spatial relationships and for maintaining the spatial consistency of the geographic data. A framework for the representation of and reasoning over geo-ontologies is presented using the Web ontology language OWL and its associated reasoning tools. Spatial reasoning and integrity rules are represented using a spatial rule engine extension...
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This paper considers the problem of integrating data sets which hold information about the same features in space. The approach proposed is based on allowing inconsistent data sets to coexist in the database and explicitly representing... more
This paper considers the problem of integrating data sets which hold information about the same features in space. The approach proposed is based on allowing inconsistent data sets to coexist in the database and explicitly representing the nature of inconsistencies among those sets. A qualitative level of representation is created where the data sets can be integrated and manipulated using
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This paper considers the problem of integrating data sets which hold information about the same features in space. The approach proposed is based on allowing inconsistent data sets to coexist in the database and explicitly representing... more
This paper considers the problem of integrating data sets which hold information about the same features in space. The approach proposed is based on allowing inconsistent data sets to coexist in the database and explicitly representing the nature of inconsistencies among those sets. A qualitative level of representation is created where the data sets can be integrated and manipulated using
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We propose a general approach for reasoning with incomplete topological knowledge in space without the need for composition tables. The approach builds on and generalizes our earlier formalism where spatial relations are represented by... more
We propose a general approach for reasoning with incomplete topological knowledge in space without the need for composition tables. The approach builds on and generalizes our earlier formalism where spatial relations are represented by the intersection of object and space components. The reasoning method is applicable to objects of arbitrary complexity. One general equation is proposed here for the propagation
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In this paper approaches to conceptual modelling of spatio- temporal domains are identified and classified into five general cate- gories: location-based, object or feature-based, event-based, functional or behavioural and causal... more
In this paper approaches to conceptual modelling of spatio- temporal domains are identified and classified into five general cate- gories: location-based, object or feature-based, event-based, functional or behavioural and causal approaches. Much work has bee directed to- wards handling the problem from the first four view points, but less from a causal perspective. It is argued that more fundamental studies
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Semantic Web Rule Languages for Geospatial Ontologies (9781605669823): Philip D. Smart, Alia I. Abdelmoty, Baher A. El-Geresy, Christopher B. Jones: Book Chapters.
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Geographical referencing of data and resources on the Web has become prevalent. Discovering and linking this information poses eminent research challenges to the geospatial semantic web, with regards to the representation and manipulation... more
Geographical referencing of data and resources on the Web has become prevalent. Discovering and linking this information poses eminent research challenges to the geospatial semantic web, with regards to the representation and manipulation of information on geographic places. Towards addressing these challenges, this work explores the potential of the current semantic web languages and tools. In particular, an integrated logical framework of rules and ontologies, using current W3C standards, is assessed for modeling geospatial ontologies of place and for encoding both symbolic and geometric references to place locations. Spatial reasoning is incorporated in the framework to facilitate the deduction of implicit spatial relations and for expressing spatial integrity constraints. The logical framework is extended with geo-computation engines that offer more effective manipulation of geometric information. Example data sets mined from web resources are used to demonstrate and evaluate th...
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There is growing interest in many application domains for the temporal treatment and manipulation of spatially referenced objects. Handling the time dimension in spatial databases can greatly enhance and extend their functionality and... more
There is growing interest in many application domains for the temporal treatment and manipulation of spatially referenced objects. Handling the time dimension in spatial databases can greatly enhance and extend their functionality and usability by offering means of understanding the spatial behaviour in time. Few works, to date, have been directed towards the development of formalisms for representation and reasoning in this domain. In this paper, a new approach is presented for the representation and reasoning over spatio-temporal relationships. The approach is simple and aims to satisfy the requirements of coherency, expressiveness and reasoning power. Consistent behaviours of spatial objects in time are denoted episodes. The topology of the domain is defined by decomposing episodes into representative components and relationships are defined between those components. Spatio-temporal reasoning is achieved by composing the relationships between the object components using constrain...