Collaborative Spatial Data Acquisition - A Spatial and Semantic Data Aggregation Approach
Sebastian Matyas · 2007
The idea of building a spatial data set by integrating data chunks collected by a large group of voluntary contributors is gaining momentum. Well-known examples are the trail libraries that mountain bikers and other sports enthusiasts have created recently. With Web 2.0 technologies supporting the self-organization of large user communities, the recruitment of contributors seems the least problem of the approach. Much more serious is the issue of data aggregation which can threaten the feasibility of collaborative acquisition of spatial data. Solutions have been proposed to the purely spatial part of the problem (e.g. the aggregation of GPS-tracks) while the semantic part, that is, the integration of conflicting thematic data, has received much less attention so far. We present an approach that uses Semantic Web technologies – formal ontologies – to describe spatial and semantic aggregation methods. More specifically, we present a rule-based language that allows us to express spatial and semantic preconditions for the application of aggregation methods. With a worked example we illustrate which type of problems our approach is able to resolve. 1.