1. 1 Illustrating GeoSpatial Semantics Gary Berg-Cross, Executive Secretary, Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCoP) gbergcross@gmail.com 6th Semi-Annual Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) e-Gov Conference MITRE, McLean VA 29 Sept.2008 Bind / Invoke Service Consumer Service Consumer Service Provide r Service Provide r Service Directory Discover / Details Publish “denotata” relates signs to things in the world Objects Symbols/ Information Concepts “Factory” Factory

2. A semantic continuum [After Mike Uschold, Boeing Corp] Shared human consensus Text descriptions Semantics hardwired; used at runtime Semantics processed and used at runtime Port: “A place on a waterway with facilities for loading and unloading ships. b. A city or town on a waterway with such facilities. c. The waterfront district of a city.” (Port isA (superclasses (…)) ImplicitInformal (explicit) Formal (for humans) RDF/RDFS Formal (for machines) OWL Further to the right means: Less ambiguity More likely to have correct functionality “Better” inter-operation Less hardwiring More robust to change More difficult –needs ontological engineering methods (Port differentFrom.. HasfunctionalProperty.. Formal Vocabulary for Port + background knowledge as axioms

3. OWL Builds on Layers below it in the Semantic Web stack From 2004 Tutorial on OWL by Peter Patel-Schneider The XML syntax for exchange & XML data types (how OWL is expressed) RDF instances & RDFS generic (ontology) statements: OWL supports mapping among ontologies: Import one data model/ontology into another: all things that are true in the imported ontology will thereby be true in the importing ontology Assert that a class, property, or instance in one ontology/DB/knowledge base is equivalent to one in another ontology

4. 4 Ports Semantic Architecture GSW Servlet KnowledgeSmarts API Rule Engine DL Reasoner Semi-structured Text -ONI Reports / ASAM -World Port Index Shipping DB OWL Mapping Web Services -Maritime ship info -WFS (GML) DNC Feature DB ENC Feature DB Text Parser RDF tuples Web Sites Oracle Connector KMS Mapping Ontology Intelligence Report Ontology Product Ontology Service Ontology From SOCoP Presentation at Tech Days, May, 2008 based on work by Mike Wilkins & May, 2008 based on work by Mike Wilkins & Jim Ressler,Northrop Grumman IT TASC

5. 5 Ports of Origin Use Case Given suspect ships departed from known country, what ports and piers could the ships have originated considering ship characteristics, port characteristics and intelligence? From SOCoP Presentation at Tech Days May, 2008\ based on work by Mike Wilkins & Jim Ressler, Northrop Grumman IT TASC Northrop Grumman IT TASC

6. Ontologies Arise from “Analysis and Conceptualization” 1 Port Situations Location of a ship is a Geospati al Entity Conceptualization starts to model (part of) the world 2 Abstraction Ship in Port UML OWL To express C In a Language L (Terms in L correspond to entities in world) and assign Interpretative Functions I Models for Domain D Expressibl e In L Intended Model Fitting C Ontology Models for D Expressed In L using K Our Ontology Product (C for D with K in L using Model) Adapted liberally from Guarino’s 1998 Formal Ontology in Information Systems Models defines relationship between L syntax and interpretations Pragmatic validation

7. SAW Ontology