Towards harmonizing property measurement standards

Area and volume values of buildings and building parts have been used in many applications including taxation, valuation and land use planning. Many countries maintain a national standard for representing the measurements of floor areas in buildings. The national standards generally use similar basis for measuring building floor areas, in fact, areas specified in national standards often have semantic differences. Therefore, a number of international standards have been developed for harmonizing floor area measurements; however, they also have differences. This study aims at harmonizing the floor areas defined in the international property measurement standards by revealing the semantic relations between them and formalizing them with an ontological approach. To achieve this objective, the international property measurement standards were firstly examined in order to identify semantics, principles and practices in floor area measurements. Then, the obtained information were utilized to develop a set of measurement ontologies for harmonizing the property measurement standards. This paper also investigates 3D data standards to reveal whether they can be utilized for realizing the property measurement standards

Semantic Resources for the Geospatial Domain

Smart surveyors are aware of the potential of semantic resources. Within the FIG community, semantic representation often supplements geospatial representation, but you also find specific references to semantic technologies. For example, Mey et al (2020) among others introduce characteristics of the semantic web, including the notion of controlled vocabularies, which assist in providing interoperability among datasets in the surveying and the construction sector, and support a wider e-governance perspective.Within the geospatial domain, such vocabularies have recently been developed and made available, namely the Geolexica of the ISO TC 211 Geographic information / Geomatics, as well as the OGC Definitions Server. The two standardization organisations have developed these resources to promote interoperability by providing easy access to the concepts and concept structures, which are applied in their standards.These efforts are part of a more general trend, providing controlled vocabularies for the various domains of science. The AGROVOC of FAO, the GEMET - GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus, and the STW Thesaurus for Economics, are among the about 100 vocabularies collected in the Basic Register of Thesauri, Ontologies & Classifications (BARTOC).For professionals and researchers, it may be difficult to explore these vast and diverse semantic resources. Therefore, domain-specific entry points have been made in terms of LandVoc - the Linked Land Governance Thesaurus, as well as the Cadastre and Land Administration Thesaurus (CaLAThe).The purpose of the paper is to provide a review of the mentioned semantic resources and to illustrate their use, e.g. for student and research projects and for national management of code lists. Concepts and concept structures are the basic elements of science. A dedicated use of the presented semantic technology and semantic resources will stimulate the scientific base of the surveying profession

Towards harmonizing property measurement standards

Area and volume values of buildings and building parts have been used in many applications including taxation, valuation and land use planning. Many countries maintain a national standard for representing the measurements of floor areas in buildings. The national standards generally use similar basis for measuring building floor areas, in fact, areas specified in national standards often have semantic differences. Therefore, a number of international standards have been developed for harmonizing floor area measurements; however, they also have differences. This study aims at harmonizing the floor areas defined in the international property measurement standards by revealing the semantic relations between them and formalizing them with an ontological approach. To achieve this objective, the international property measurement standards were firstly examined in order to identify semantics, principles and practices in floor area measurements. Then, the obtained information were utilized to develop a set of measurement ontologies for harmonizing the property measurement standards. This paper also investigates 3D data standards to reveal whether they can be utilized for realizing the property measurement standards