Eleni Tomai

From “Onto-GeoNoesis” to “Onto-Genesis”: The Design of Geographic Ontologies

An important issue in geographic ontological research is the ability to design new ontologies. In this context, we first explore the desiderata of domain ontologies in terms of their constituting elements: i.e., the lexicon, concepts, relations, and axioms. Furthermore, we touch upon several characteristics of geographic concepts, which have puzzled geographic information scientists, and present critical topics of geographic ontological research. Based on the previous aspects of the problem, and guided by prior work of analyzing existent geographic ontologies, we have identified their qualities and deficiencies with regard to completeness and adequacy. This “meta-ontological” approach has guided us in presenting herein, a framework for generating robust geographic ontologies, which will comply with the semantics of the concepts of the specific domain.

Ontology assisted decision making – a case study in trip planning for tourism

Traditional trip planning involves decisions made by tourists in order to explore an environment, such as a geographic area, usually without having any prior knowledge or experience with it. Contemporary technological development has facilitated not only human mobility but also has set the path for various applications to assist tourists in way-finding, event notification using location-based services etc. Our approach explores how the use of ontologies can assist tourists plan their trip, in a web-based environment. The methodology consists of building two separate ontologies, one for the users profile and another one concerning tourism information and data in order to assist visitors of an area plan their visit.

Ontology-based documentation of land degradation assessment from satellite images

In this paper, we introduce the idea of documenting operational chains for land degradation assessment using ontologies. We believe that this process will help end users better understand the application domain characteristics and evaluate the results of the assessment process. Since the application domain is wide, various operational chains for land degradation assessment and their associated documentation exist, according to different options. This parameterization process causes the development of different ontologies, which nonetheless are, to a certain extent, linked because of the common software components of the corresponding operational chains. We therefore propose a hierarchical structure of these ontologies; so that several requirements such as understanding of expert knowledge interconnections and of application domain variety, documentation and assimilation of new expert knowledge, and reusability of software components become feasible.

Semantically-Aware Systems: Extraction of Geosemantics, Ontology Engineering, and Ontology Integration

Geographic hypermedia systems include geospatial information from diverse sources. Meaningful access and utilization of such information is materialized only with semantic integration and proper documentation through ontologies. The present work presents a unified view of important research subdomains tasks related to geosemantics and ontologies, (as formal representations of geographic knowledge), such as ontology engineering, extraction of semantic information and ontology integration. Although there is a great degree of recent literature in the field, differences in (a) perspective — purpose, (b) the primary information available and (c) the methodologies and tools used, compose unrelated approaches that have not been put in the overall context. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for the wider audience to understand the difference and the applicability of available approaches in a given context. An attempt is made to draw the overall picture in order to assist users in defining their problem, selecting an appropriate approach and successfully undertaking a geosemantics or ontology-based task.

GEOTHNK: A Semantic Approach to Spatial Thinking

Spatial thinking has lately been acknowledged as an important ability both for sciences and for everyday life. There is a clear need for enhancing spatial thinking in education and engaging both educators and learners in more critical, inquiry-based teaching and learning methods. In this context, GEOTHNK project is a European effort to propose a scientifically grounded, technologically sustainable, and organizationally disruptive framework for the development of learning pathways for enhancing spatial thinking across education sectors and learning environments.

The GEOTHNK Platform: Connecting Spatial Thinking to Secondary Education

The GEOTHNK project focuses on spatial thinking, a newly acknowledged ability with profound and rewarding effects on numerous aspects of everyday life and science-from giving and following directions and interpreting maps and diagrams, to achieving innovation in STEM disciplines. Spatial thinking constitutes a key competence for life and work in the 21st century and therefore an essential component of European educational and training activities. GEOTHNK aims at enhancing geospatial thinking skills and engaging users in meaningful, inquiry-based learning experiences.