Ontological analysis of observations and measurements

  • Authors:

  • Florian Probst

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

  • Venue:
  • GIScience'06 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Geographic Information Science
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Geographic information is based on observations or measurements. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed an implementation specification for observations and measurements (O&M). It specifies precisely how to encode information. Yet, the O&M conceptual model does not specify precisely which real-world entities are denoted by the specified information objects. We provide formal semantics for the central O&M terms by aligning them to the foundational ontology DOLCE. The alignment to a foundational ontology restricts the possible interpretations of the central elements in the O&M model and establishes explicit relations between categories of real world entities and classes of information objects. These relations are essential for assessing semantic interoperability between geospatial information sources.