Geospatial Meaning

We attended at the 5th Geographic Information Systems conference at Istanbul the 2-5 July, where we were introducing our Geoconcepts architecture. One of the main themes of the conference was Geographic Information Science Education. Robert S. Bednarz and Sarah W. Bednarz introduced us some key points in spatial thinking skills and explicit spatial training. They consider three main scenarios in spatial thinking:

• Thinking IN space. This happens in our daily activities, when we move from one place to another, or when we arrange things in space, as these big amount of unread papers in my desk
• Thinking ABOUT space. This is more related to geographic science, and to the study of how reality is organized spatially. Maps and 3D models are convinient ways to think about space.
• Thinking WITH space. Sometimes we use spatial representations for abstract or complex concepts or theories. An example could be a hierarchy diagram of an ontology classes. Also graphs, concept maps etc. are powerful tools to think with space.

These three contexts overlap so often. For instance, in Geospatial ontologies modeling, we use space (WITH space) to model how we think spatially (IN space), and try to approach our traditional ways to explain space (ABOUT space).

Spatial information, or knowledge, has unique and special problems and characteristics. Since the 90s, many people consider Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a set of technologies that try to solve spatial problems. But the academic theory behind the development, use, and application of GIS is widely named Geographic Information Science or GIScience.

That is, a Science of Geographic or Spatial Information.In 2006, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, formed by some tens of USA Universities published the Geographic Information Scicence & Technology Body of Knowledge, which represents an effort to compile an inventory of the skills, concepts and knowledge related to Geographic Information Science and Technology.

It is worth a look, and it is quite cheap, just 25$. The next release or version is planned for 2010. It will necessary have to update all knowledge about Geospatial Data, Standards and Metadata that have emerged in the last years. Also the new challenges arised from Location Based Services and Mobile Geoweb have to be taken into account.

We have developed a new Geospatial ontology within the CINeSPACE project. The main idea behind this ontology is a more ample model of the spatial dimension. Some concepts, such as country, mountain or building are inherently spatial. But there exists an important number of concepts that are not physically geographic, although they are commonly related to certain areas. Some examples could be human activities as going shopping. Also events and parties or famous personalities are often related to a spatial extent. We have introduced the term “geoconcept” to name any entity with an inherently or indirectly associated spatial dimension. Some characteristics of the ontology are:

• It reuses existing standards, such as GeoOWL and Geonames feature type hierarchy.
• Its expressivity is OWL Lite. Fuzzy logic extensions were planned for spatial relationships, so simplicity is important to guarantee the decidability.
• A rough set of spatial relationships is defined. As the spatial extent of abstract concepts is vague or uncertain, the RCC8 model can’t help with this modeling. Mereologic and neighbourhood properties are defined.
• Spatial common reasoning is strongly related to sight sense. Many times we reference our position with what we see, although we don’t be exactly in that place. This effect is clearly seen in Geotagging processes, when sometimes the position of the photo’s target is provided, but other times the point where the photo was taken is recorded. We call this the source-target problem and we have added a new spatial relationship, hasNiceViewsOf, to model this problem.
• Polygons centroid is added to the geometry part.
• While complete fuzzy reasoners are developed, a simple model is provided to deal with different degrees of uncertainty, adding several fuzzy subproperties to spatial relationships. A set of SWRL rules is optionally added to manage fuzzy transitivity.

An skeleton of the ontology is depicted in the following figure:

Two versions can be used: Geoconcepts Ontology v1.2, and v1.2 SWRL enhanced model.

The blogosphere have widely covered the release of My Location service for Google Maps for mobile. It uses GSM cell tower identifications to provide an approximate localization of a mobile device. Thus it is posible to develop Location Based Services in mobiles without GPS. Google also has announced the two ways to use these new functions programmatically, over the Android OS and with Google Gears for Windows Mobile.

The following video explains this idea:

But this idea is not new and perhaps it is not the best option.

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If you are still amazed for the huge amount of location-aware applications that have given rise to the GeoWeb, Prepare yourself for the next trend!!

I read the book The Geospatial Web, How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society just 10 months ago. And it is almost obsolete! Many times research proposals are archived in deep drawers, or must wait technology, money or society to become real.But mainly Google Maps, and also Yahoo Maps and Live Search Maps have contributed to a location revolution.

People understand fast location based services, because location is inherent to our existence. For most of us, it is easy to understand the new map-navigation paradigms.

There is just a technology that got in our souls faster than internet. A bad quality and expensive technology: the mobile phones. Now everything points to a convergence between these two succesful worlds. Mobile GeoWeb is arriving and will success probably in less than 12 months. Mobile GeoWeb will allow the user to receive, and add information while on the move. Many people that nowadays can’t access to internet services will find easyer to ask the phone for a restaurant, a beautiful sight or a bank in their neighbourhood.

Some clues are here: New GPS enabled phones, Mapping applications adapted to mobile devices, and increasing of Location based services in mobile frameworks.

GPS enabled phones

Although the list of GPS enabled phones is increasing, the main actors are the following:

Phones working over Windows Mobile OS, as HTC and Blacberry ones.

Phones over Simbian. The biggest mobile vendor, Nokia, offers a couple of devices with the N95 heading the list.

The last apple’s gadget, the iPhone 3G.

Mobile mapping applications

Google maps mobile.

Nokia maps 2.0

PSP Go! Explorer

iPhone maps

And more Location based software

Nokia Exif Location Tagger, Nokia walk and others.

Windows Mobile GPS tracking and navigation software

Webs adapted for mobile devices and Location Based Services.

Aircratf and airport mobile information.

And, What to do?

Let’s get geospatial semantic web mobile.