Mining topological relations from the web

Topological relations between geographic regions are of interest in many applications. When the exact boundaries of regions are not available, such relations can be established by analysing natural language information from web documents. In particular we demonstrate how redundancy-based techniques can be used to acquire containment and adjacency relations, and how fuzzy spatial reasoning can be employed to maintain the consistency of the resulting knowledge base

Viewpoints on emergent semantics

Authors include:Philippe Cudr´e-Mauroux, and Karl Aberer (editors), Alia I. Abdelmoty, Tiziana Catarci, Ernesto Damiani, Arantxa Illaramendi, Robert Meersman, Erich J. Neuhold, Christine Parent, Kai-Uwe Sattler, Monica Scannapieco, Stefano Spaccapietra, Peter Spyns, and Guy De Tr´eWe introduce a novel view on how to deal with the problems of semantic interoperability in distributed systems. This view is based on the concept of emergent semantics, which sees both the representation of semantics and the discovery of the proper interpretation of symbols as the result of a self-organizing process performed by distributed agents exchanging symbols and having utilities dependent on the proper interpretation of the symbols. This is a complex systems perspective on the problem of dealing with semantics. We highlight some of the distinctive features of our vision and point out preliminary examples of its applicatio

Towards Understanding Location Privacy Awareness on Geo-Social Networks

Users' awareness of the extent of information implicit in their geo-profiles on social networks is limited. This questions the validity of their consent to the collection, storage and use of their data. Tools for location privacy awareness are needed that provide users with accessible means for understanding the implicit content in their location information as well as a view of the level of risk to their privacy as a consequence of disclosing this information. Towards this goal, an abstract model of location privacy threat levels is first derived from a user study involving 186 users. This is then used to inform the design of a prototype privacy feedback tool for a location-based social network. Another user study involving 338 users of this network is carried out to test the effectiveness of the proposed design. Findings confirm the strong need of users for more transparent access to and control over their location profiles and guide the proposal of recommendations to the design of more privacy-sensitive geo-social networks

An Evaluation of Geo-Ontology Representation Languages for Supporting Web Retrieval of Geographical Information

The internet is the single largest information resource in the world. It is, however, not being used to is full potential. Currently most the information is written using syntactical machine readable languages such as HTML. These languages are limited in that they are only intended for human consumption. To fully unlock the potential of such a vast resource of information, we need to make the information not only machine readable but machine-understandable. In order to gain machine understanding we need semantic languages which are able to define meaning to the information being stored. Agents (human or machine) could then use this information in variety of different ways. A large amount of geographical information is currently being stored and delivered over the internet. Internet providers such as the Ordnance Survey are realizing the potential and are currently offering their data in GML format. Geographic digital libraries, such as the ADL, are being established. There is, however, the need to realize the potential of semantically enriching the geographic information to provide more automated and intelligent ways of managing and retrieving the data over the web. In February 2001 the semantic web initiative was launched by W3C (W3C, 2001) for the semantic representation of data on the Web. Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, is quoted as saying `The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation'. In order for the semantic web to function, computers need access to structured information and inference rules. Key to this is the use of ontologies. An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization, which provides the structured vocabulary a..