Levels Of Data Interoperability In The Emerging North American Groundwater Data Network

The Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) and the US National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) connect data from a variety of sources including states, provinces and federal agencies. Data heterogeneity is a major challenge faced by these networks, one that must be overcome at five distinct levels: systems, syntax, structure, semantics, and pragmatics. This paper discusses approaches taken at each of the five levels to ensure interoperability between the Canadian and American networks. The result is an emerging North American Groundwater Data Network, which enables users to access data transparently and uniformly on either side of the shared border

Toward A Foundational Hydro Ontology For Water Data Interoperability

Hydro ontologies are digital artifacts that contain representations of hydrological entities. They are being constructed to advance interoperability within and between various water data networks. Increased growth of such networks, however, is prompting integration of a greater variety of data, which requires a more general and principled approach to hydro ontology. One such approach is the development of a canonical reference ontology. This paper describes recent progress on the development of such an ontology for both the surface and subsurface hydro domains. Identified is a container schema that anchors the ontology, and also described is an initial representation of the ontology

Geospatial Semantics

Geospatial semantics is a broad field that involves a variety of research areas. The term semantics refers to the meaning of things, and is in contrast with the term syntactics. Accordingly, studies on geospatial semantics usually focus on understanding the meaning of geographic entities as well as their counterparts in the cognitive and digital world, such as cognitive geographic concepts and digital gazetteers. Geospatial semantics can also facilitate the design of geographic information systems (GIS) by enhancing the interoperability of distributed systems and developing more intelligent interfaces for user interactions. During the past years, a lot of research has been conducted, approaching geospatial semantics from different perspectives, using a variety of methods, and targeting different problems. Meanwhile, the arrival of big geo data, especially the large amount of unstructured text data on the Web, and the fast development of natural language processing methods enable new research directions in geospatial semantics. This chapter, therefore, provides a systematic review on the existing geospatial semantic research. Six major research areas are identified and discussed, including semantic interoperability, digital gazetteers, geographic information retrieval, geospatial Semantic Web, place semantics, and cognitive geographic concepts.Comment: Yingjie Hu (2017). Geospatial Semantics. In Bo Huang, Thomas J. Cova, and Ming-Hsiang Tsou et al. (Eds): Comprehensive Geographic Information Systems, Elsevier. Oxford, U

Understanding scientific study via process modeling

This paper argues that scientific studies distinguish themselves from other studies by a combination of their processes, their (knowledge) elements and the roles of these elements. This is supported by constructing a process model. An illustrative example based on Newtonian mechanics shows how scientific knowledge is structured according to the process model. To distinguish scientific studies from research and scientific research, two additional process models are built for such processes. We apply these process models: (1) to argue that scientific progress should emphasize both the process of change and the content of change; (2) to chart the major stages of scientific study development; and (3) to define “science”

An Object Model For Geologic Map

National geologic map databases are presently being constructed in the U.S. and Canada, as well as in several other countries. Here, we describe an object-based model for geologic map information, specifically designed to represent digital geologic maps and related geoscientific information. Although oriented to geoscience, several fundamental issues in representing geospatial information are explored in this design, including the philosophic and cognitive basis of mapping in general, and the overall framework in which map-related information can be represented. Thus we take an ontologic approach to geospatial representation, supplemented by an epistemic view of the scientific process, which culminates in a very general model---a meta-model---for map information. Practical as well as theoretical considerations motivate this approach. Primarily, however, we describe the theoretical foundations of our meta-model, specifically semiotics, category theory, and ontology in geospatial information. Finally, we report briefly on a specific prototype data model derived from the meta-model and implemented in a commercial object-oriented GIS