Linkable Geographic Ontologies

Abstract

The performance of some tasks in Information Retrieval is strongly related to the extent and quality of the geographic knowledge about named places. This paper presents a conceptualization of the geographic knowledge, the Geo-Net vocabulary, and a tool for building large knowledge bases of named places, the GKB management system, developed in the GREASE-II project. The Geo-Net vocabulary is a conceptual model for describing geographic places, including their names, types, relationships and footprints. It uses URIs and the RDF data model to expose, share and connect pieces of geographic knowledge each other and to related data on the Web. The GKB system is a multi-paradigm knowledge management system that enables the development of geographic ontologies with the Geo-Net vocabulary. This paper also presents a geographic ontology of Portugal, Geo-Net-PT 02, created with the Geo-Net vocabulary and the GKB system.