Development of an interface for ontology‐based transformation between features of different types

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesImplementation of the INSPIRE directive, the spatial data infrastructure for the Europe, has created a necessity for easy and convenient conversion between different models of geospatial data. Data model transformation across heterogeneous systems can be hampered by differences in terminology and conceptualization, particularly when multiple communities are involved. Requirement in current situation is an interface facilitating transformation of data to a desired format and immediate use of the data, which are collected from different formats and models. Ontology-aware software with shared understanding of concepts, enable users to interact with geospatial data models. Thus use of ontologies could make a friendly environment to the user in translating the data conveniently. Feature type ontologies, along with annotations are provided from an ongoing project at the Institute for Geoinformatics (IfGI, University of Münster, Germany), in order to reconcile differences in semantics. FME workbench provides a successful environment to execute set of rules for the data model transformation using a mapping file, which can be developed externally. The thesis work developed a user interface that includes operations to define rules for the translation of geospatial data, from one model to another. Annotated feature types are taken as input, and the results are encoded as FME Mapping files. The overall methodology involves three phases.(...