Republishing OpenStreetMap’s roads as linked routable tiles

Route planning providers manually integrate different geo-spatial datasets before offering a Web service to developers, thus creating a closed world view. In contrast, combining open datasets at runtime can provide more information for user-specific route planning needs. For example, an extra dataset of bike sharing availabilities may provide more relevant information to the occasional cyclist. A strategy for automating the adoption of open geo-spatial datasets is needed to allow an ecosystem of route planners able to answer more specific and complex queries. This raises new challenges such as (i) how open geo-spatial datasets should be published on the Web to raise interoperability, and (ii) how route planners can discover and integrate relevant data for a certain query on the fly. We republished OpenStreetMap's road network as "Routable Tiles" to facilitate its integration into open route planners. To achieve this, we use a Linked Data strategy and follow an approach similar to vector tiles. In a demo, we show how client-side code can automatically discover tiles and perform a shortest path algorithm. We provide four contributions: (i) we launched an open geo-spatial dataset that is available for everyone to reuse at no cost, (ii) we published a Linked Data version of the OpenStreetMap ontology, (iii) we introduced a hypermedia specification for vector tiles that extends the Hydra ontology, and (iv) we released the mapping scripts, demo and routing scripts as open source software

Investigating the use of semantic technologies in spatial mapping applications

Semantic Web Technologies are ideally suited to build context-aware information retrieval applications. However, the geospatial aspect of context awareness presents unique challenges such as the semantic modelling of geographical references for efficient handling of spatial queries, the reconciliation of the heterogeneity at the semantic and geo-representation levels, maintaining the quality of service and scalability of communicating, and the efficient rendering of the spatial queries' results. In this paper, we describe the modelling decisions taken to solve these challenges by analysing our implementation of an intelligent planning and recommendation tool that provides location-aware advice for a specific application domain. This paper contributes to the methodology of integrating heterogeneous geo-referenced data into semantic knowledgebases, and also proposes mechanisms for efficient spatial interrogation of the semantic knowledgebase and optimising the rendering of the dynamically retrieved context-relevant information on a web frontend

A grounding-based ontology of data quality measures

Data quality and fitness for purpose can be assessed by data quality measures. Existing ontologies of data quality dimensions reflect, among others, which aspects of data quality are assessed and the mechanisms that lead to poor data quality. An understanding of which source of information is used to judge about data quality and fitness for purpose is, however, lacking. This article introduces an ontology of data quality measures by their grounding, that is, the source of information to which the data is compared to in order to assess their quality. The ontology is exemplified with several examples of volunteered geographic information (VGI), while also applying to other geographical data and data in general. An evaluation of the ontology in the context of data quality measures for OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, a well-known example of VGI, provides insights about which types of quality measures for OSM data have and which have not yet been considered in literature

The Distributed Ontology Language (DOL): Use Cases, Syntax, and Extensibility

The Distributed Ontology Language (DOL) is currently being standardized within the OntoIOp (Ontology Integration and Interoperability) activity of ISO/TC 37/SC 3. It aims at providing a unified framework for (1) ontologies formalized in heterogeneous logics, (2) modular ontologies, (3) links between ontologies, and (4) annotation of ontologies. This paper presents the current state of DOL's standardization. It focuses on use cases where distributed ontologies enable interoperability and reusability. We demonstrate relevant features of the DOL syntax and semantics and explain how these integrate into existing knowledge engineering environments.Comment: Terminology and Knowledge Engineering Conference (TKE) 2012-06-20 to 2012-06-21 Madrid, Spai

Are crowdsourced datasets suitable for specialized routing services? Case study of Openstreetmap for routing of people with limited mobility

Nowadays, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has increasingly gained attractiveness to both amateur users and professionals. Using data generated from the crowd has become a hot topic for several application domains including transportation. However, there are concerns regarding the quality of such datasets. As one of the most famous crowdsourced mapping platforms, we analyze the fitness for use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) database for routing and navigation of people with limited mobility. We assess the completeness of OSM data regarding sidewalk information. Relevant attributes for sidewalk information such as sidewalk width, incline, surface texture, etc. are considered, and through both extrinsic and intrinsic quality analysis methods, we present the results of fitness for use of OSM data for routing services of disabled persons. Based on empirical results, it is concluded that OSM data of relatively large spatial extents inside all studied cities could be an acceptable region of interest to test and evaluate wheelchair routing and navigation services, as long as other data quality parameters such as positional accuracy and logical consistency are checked and proved to be acceptable. We present an extended version of OSMatrix web service and explore how it is employed to perform spatial and temporal analysis of sidewalk data completeness in OSM. The tool is beneficial for piloting activities, whereas the pilot site planners can query OpenStreetMap and visualize the degree of sidewalk data availability in a certain region of interest. This would allow identifying the areas that data are mostly missing and plan for data collection events. Furthermore, empirical results of data completeness for several OSM data indicators and their potential relation to sidewalk data completeness are presented and discussed. Finally, the article ends with an outlook for future research study in this area

Constraint-based Recommender System for Crisis Management Simulations

In the context of the evacuation of populations, some citizens/volunteers may want and be able to participate in the evacuation of populations in difficulty by coming to lend a hand to emergency/evacuation vehicles with their own vehicles. One way of framing these impulses of solidarity would be to be able to list in real-time the citizens/volunteers available with their vehicles (land, sea, air, etc.), to be able to geolocate them according to the risk areas to be evacuated, and adding them to the evacuation/rescue vehicles. Because it is difficult to propose an effective real-time operational system on the field in a real crisis situation, in this work, we propose to add a module for recommending driver/vehicle pairs (with their specificities) to a system of crisis management simulation. To do that, we chose to model and develop an ontology-supported constraint-based recommender system for crisis management simulations