Automatic reconstruction of itineraries from descriptive texts

Esta tesis se inscribe dentro del marco del proyecto PERDIDO donde los objetivos son la extracción y reconstrucción de itinerarios a partir de documentos textuales. Este trabajo se ha realizado en colaboración entre el laboratorio LIUPPA de l' Université de Pau et des Pays de l' Adour (France), el grupo de Sistemas de Información Avanzados (IAAA) de la Universidad de Zaragoza y el laboratorio COGIT de l' IGN (France). El objetivo de esta tesis es concebir un sistema automático que permita extraer, a partir de guías de viaje o descripciones de itinerarios, los desplazamientos, además de representarlos sobre un mapa. Se propone una aproximación para la representación automática de itinerarios descritos en lenguaje natural. Nuestra propuesta se divide en dos tareas principales. La primera pretende identificar y extraer de los textos describiendo itinerarios información como entidades espaciales y expresiones de desplazamiento o percepción. El objetivo de la segunda tarea es la reconstrucción del itinerario. Nuestra propuesta combina información local extraída gracias al procesamiento del lenguaje natural con datos extraídos de fuentes geográficas externas (por ejemplo, gazetteers). La etapa de anotación de informaciones espaciales se realiza mediante una aproximación que combina el etiquetado morfo-sintáctico y los patrones léxico-sintácticos (cascada de transductores) con el fin de anotar entidades nombradas espaciales y expresiones de desplazamiento y percepción. Una primera contribución a la primera tarea es la desambiguación de topónimos, que es un problema todavía mal resuelto dentro del reconocimiento de entidades nombradas (Named Entity Recognition - NER) y esencial en la recuperación de información geográfica. Se plantea un algoritmo no supervisado de georreferenciación basado en una técnica de clustering capaz de proponer una solución para desambiguar los topónimos los topónimos encontrados en recursos geográficos externos, y al mismo tiempo, la localización de topónimos no referenciados. Se propone un modelo de grafo genérico para la reconstrucción automática de itinerarios, donde cada nodo representa un lugar y cada arista representa un camino enlazando dos lugares. La originalidad de nuestro modelo es que además de tener en cuenta los elementos habituales (caminos y puntos del recorrido), permite representar otros elementos involucrados en la descripción de un itinerario, como por ejemplo los puntos de referencia visual. Se calcula de un árbol de recubrimiento mínimo a partir de un grafo ponderado para obtener automáticamente un itinerario bajo la forma de un grafo. Cada arista del grafo inicial se pondera mediante un método de análisis multicriterio que combina criterios cualitativos y cuantitativos. El valor de estos criterios se determina a partir de informaciones extraídas del texto e informaciones provenientes de recursos geográficos externos. Por ejemplo, se combinan las informaciones generadas por el procesamiento del lenguaje natural como las relaciones espaciales describiendo una orientación (ej: dirigirse hacia el sur) con las coordenadas geográficas de lugares encontrados dentro de los recursos para determinar el valor del criterio ``relación espacial''. Además, a partir de la definición del concepto de itinerario y de las informaciones utilizadas en la lengua para describir un itinerario, se ha modelado un lenguaje de anotación de información espacial adaptado a la descripción de desplazamientos, apoyándonos en las recomendaciones del consorcio TEI (Text Encoding and Interchange). Finalmente, se ha implementado y evaluado las diferentes etapas de nuestra aproximación sobre un corpus multilingüe de descripciones de senderos y excursiones (francés, español, italiano)

A Geospatial Service Model and Catalog for Discovery and Orchestration

The goal of this research is to provide a supporting Web services architecture, consisting of a service model and catalog, to allow discovery and automatic orchestration of geospatial Web services. First, a methodology for supporting geospatial Web services with existing orchestration tools is presented. Geospatial services are automatically translated into SOAP/WSDL services by a portable service wrapper. Their data layers are exposed as atomic functions while WSDL extensions provide syntactic metadata. Compliant services are modeled using the descriptive logic capabilities of the Ontology Language for the Web (OWL). The resulting geospatial service model has a number of functions. It provides a basic taxonomy of geospatial Web services that is useful for templating service compositions. It also contains the necessary annotations to allow discovery of services. Importantly, the model defines a number of logical relationships between its internal concepts which allow inconsistency detection for the model as a whole and for individual service instances as they are added to the catalog. These logical relationships have the additional benefit of supporting automatic classification of geospatial services individuals when they are added to the service catalog. The geospatial service catalog is backed by the descriptive logic model. It supports queries which are more complex that those available using standard relational data models, such as the capability to query using concept hierarchies. An example orchestration system demonstrates the use of the geospatial service catalog for query evaluation in an automatic orchestration system (both fully and semi-automatic orchestration). Computational complexity analysis and experimental performance analysis identify potential performance problems in the geospatial service catalog. Solutions to these performance issues are presented in the form of partitioning service instance realization, low cost pre-filtering of service instances, and pre-processing realization. The resulting model and catalog provide an architecture to support automatic orchestration capable of complementing the multiple service composition algorithms that currently exist. Importantly, the geospatial service model and catalog go beyond simply supporting orchestration systems. By providing a general solution to the modeling and discovery of geospatial Web services they are useful in any geospastial Web service enterprise

Rivière or Fleuve? Modelling Multilinguality in the Hydrographical

The need for interoperability among geospatial resources in different natural languages evidences the difficulties to cope with domain representations highly dependent of the culture in which they have been conceived. In this paper we characterize the problem of representing cultural discrepancies in ontologies. We argue that such differences can be accounted for at the ontology terminological layer by means of external elaborated models of linguistic information associated to ontologies. With the aim of showing how external models can cater for cultural discrepancies, we compare two versions of an ontology of the hydrographical domain: hydrOntology. The first version makes use of the labeling system supported by RDF(S) and OWL to include multilingual linguistic information in the ontology. The second version relies on the Linguistic Information Repository model (LIR) to associate structured multilingual information to ontology concepts. In this paper we propose an extension to the LIR to better capture linguistic and cultural specificities within and across language

Using SCXML to integrate semantic sensor information into context-aware user interfaces

This paper describes a novel architecture to introduce automatic annotation and processing of semantic sensor data within context-aware applications. Based on the well-known state-charts technologies, and represented using W3C SCXML language combined with Semantic Web technologies, our architecture is able to provide enriched higher-level semantic representations of user’s context. This capability to detect and model relevant user situations allows a seamless modeling of the actual interaction situation, which can be integrated during the design of multimodal user interfaces (also based on SCXML) for them to be adequately adapted. Therefore, the final result of this contribution can be described as a flexible context-aware SCXML-based architecture, suitable for both designing a wide range of multimodal context-aware user interfaces, and implementing the automatic enrichment of sensor data, making it available to the entire Semantic Sensor We

Global-Scale Resource Survey and Performance Monitoring of Public OGC Web Map Services

One of the most widely-implemented service standards provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to the user community is the Web Map Service (WMS). WMS is widely employed globally, but there is limited knowledge of the global distribution, adoption status or the service quality of these online WMS resources. To fill this void, we investigated global WMSs resources and performed distributed performance monitoring of these services. This paper explicates a distributed monitoring framework that was used to monitor 46,296 WMSs continuously for over one year and a crawling method to discover these WMSs. We analyzed server locations, provider types, themes, the spatiotemporal coverage of map layers and the service versions for 41,703 valid WMSs. Furthermore, we appraised the stability and performance of basic operations for 1210 selected WMSs (i.e., GetCapabilities and GetMap). We discuss the major reasons for request errors and performance issues, as well as the relationship between service response times and the spatiotemporal distribution of client monitoring sites. This paper will help service providers, end users and developers of standards to grasp the status of global WMS resources, as well as to understand the adoption status of OGC standards. The conclusions drawn in this paper can benefit geospatial resource discovery, service performance evaluation and guide service performance improvements.Comment: 24 pages; 15 figure

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

Katalog metapodataka u prostornim informacijskim sustavima

This paper gives the short review of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) metadata catalogue services that have the key role in geospatial resource discovery in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). The notion of Spatial Data Infrastructure comprises a collection of technologies, policies and institutional agreements that provide an easier access to geospatial data. The SDI is suitable for usage in geospatial data discovery, evaluation, and also various applications within government, commercial and non-profit sectors, academic institutions, etc. Metadata catalogue services have been specified in OGC Catalogue Service Implementation Specification. The part of the specification that specifies a web interface that supports the storage, retrieval, and management of data related to web services, is called Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW). Metadata catalogues are service brokers that represent a key component in a service-oriented architecture that manages shared resources and facilitates the discovery of resources within an open, distributed system. OGC services have gained significant popularity in recent years and the number of organizations using them has increased. However, the full potential of metadata catalogues has not yet been reached, not only because of the lack of appropriate documentation of data in the form of standardized metadata, but because the lack of semantics of the data. The analysis of the usage of metadata catalogue services in geodetic information systems has been given and the proposal for a possible solution for improvement has been made.U radu je prikazan kratki pregled usluga kataloga metapodataka Otvorenoga geoprostornog konzorcija (OGC) koji ima ključnu ulogu u otkrivanju geoprostornih izvora informacija u Prostornoj infrastrukturi podataka (SDI). Pojam Prostorne infrastrukture podataka obuhvaća skup tehnologija, strategija i institucionalnih sporazuma koji osiguravaju lakši pristup geoprostornim podacima. SDI je pogodan za upotrebu pri otkrivanju geoprostornih podataka, evaluaciji, kao i različitim primjenama unutar vladinog, komercijalnog i neprofitabilnog sektora, akademskih institucija, itd. Usluge kataloga metapodataka specificirane su u OGC Specifikaciji ostvarivanja usluga kataloga. Dio specifikacije koji se odnosi na web-sučelje koje podržava pohranu, učitavanje i upravljanje podacima koji se odnose na web-servise naziva se Kataloški servis za web (CSW). Katalozi metapodataka su agenti za usluge koji predstavljaju ključnu komponentu u arhitekturi namijenjenoj uslugama, a koja upravlja zajedničkim izvorima i olakšava otkrivanje izvora unutar otvorenoga distribuiranog sustava. OGC usluge stekle su značajnu popularnost u proteklim godinama, a broj organizacija koje ih koriste se povećao. Međutim, puni potencijal kataloga metapodataka još nije dostignut, ne samo zbog nedostatka odgovarajuće dokumentacije podataka u obliku standardiziranih metapodataka, već i zbog nedostatka semantike podataka. Napravljena je analiza korištenja usluga kataloga metapodataka u geodetskim informacijskim sustavima te je dan prijedlog za moguća rješenja u svrhu poboljšanja

Katalog metapodataka u prostornim informacijskim sustavima

This paper gives the short review of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) metadata catalogue services that have the key role in geospatial resource discovery in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). The notion of Spatial Data Infrastructure comprises a collection of technologies, policies and institutional agreements that provide an easier access to geospatial data. The SDI is suitable for usage in geospatial data discovery, evaluation, and also various applications within government, commercial and non-profit sectors, academic institutions, etc. Metadata catalogue services have been specified in OGC Catalogue Service Implementation Specification. The part of the specification that specifies a web interface that supports the storage, retrieval, and management of data related to web services, is called Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW). Metadata catalogues are service brokers that represent a key component in a service-oriented architecture that manages shared resources and facilitates the discovery of resources within an open, distributed system. OGC services have gained significant popularity in recent years and the number of organizations using them has increased. However, the full potential of metadata catalogues has not yet been reached, not only because of the lack of appropriate documentation of data in the form of standardized metadata, but because the lack of semantics of the data. The analysis of the usage of metadata catalogue services in geodetic information systems has been given and the proposal for a possible solution for improvement has been made.U radu je prikazan kratki pregled usluga kataloga metapodataka Otvorenoga geoprostornog konzorcija (OGC) koji ima ključnu ulogu u otkrivanju geoprostornih izvora informacija u Prostornoj infrastrukturi podataka (SDI). Pojam Prostorne infrastrukture podataka obuhvaća skup tehnologija, strategija i institucionalnih sporazuma koji osiguravaju lakši pristup geoprostornim podacima. SDI je pogodan za upotrebu pri otkrivanju geoprostornih podataka, evaluaciji, kao i različitim primjenama unutar vladinog, komercijalnog i neprofitabilnog sektora, akademskih institucija, itd. Usluge kataloga metapodataka specificirane su u OGC Specifikaciji ostvarivanja usluga kataloga. Dio specifikacije koji se odnosi na web-sučelje koje podržava pohranu, učitavanje i upravljanje podacima koji se odnose na web-servise naziva se Kataloški servis za web (CSW). Katalozi metapodataka su agenti za usluge koji predstavljaju ključnu komponentu u arhitekturi namijenjenoj uslugama, a koja upravlja zajedničkim izvorima i olakšava otkrivanje izvora unutar otvorenoga distribuiranog sustava. OGC usluge stekle su značajnu popularnost u proteklim godinama, a broj organizacija koje ih koriste se povećao. Međutim, puni potencijal kataloga metapodataka još nije dostignut, ne samo zbog nedostatka odgovarajuće dokumentacije podataka u obliku standardiziranih metapodataka, već i zbog nedostatka semantike podataka. Napravljena je analiza korištenja usluga kataloga metapodataka u geodetskim informacijskim sustavima te je dan prijedlog za moguća rješenja u svrhu poboljšanja

Internet of things

Manual of Digital Earth / Editors: Huadong Guo, Michael F. Goodchild, Alessandro Annoni .- Springer, 2020 .- ISBN: 978-981-32-9915-3Digital Earth was born with the aim of replicating the real world within the digital world. Many efforts have been made to observe and sense the Earth, both from space (remote sensing) and by using in situ sensors. Focusing on the latter, advances in Digital Earth have established vital bridges to exploit these sensors and their networks by taking location as a key element. The current era of connectivity envisions that everything is connected to everything. The concept of the Internet of Things(IoT)emergedasaholisticproposaltoenableanecosystemofvaried,heterogeneous networked objects and devices to speak to and interact with each other. To make the IoT ecosystem a reality, it is necessary to understand the electronic components, communication protocols, real-time analysis techniques, and the location of the objects and devices. The IoT ecosystem and the Digital Earth (DE) jointly form interrelated infrastructures for addressing today’s pressing issues and complex challenges. In this chapter, we explore the synergies and frictions in establishing an efficient and permanent collaboration between the two infrastructures, in order to adequately address multidisciplinary and increasingly complex real-world problems. Although there are still some pending issues, the identified synergies generate optimism for a true collaboration between the Internet of Things and the Digital Earth