On General Place Names and the Associated Ontology
Lulu Xue · Geography and Geo-Information Science · 2007
A novel concept,general place name(GPN),is proposed in this paper.A general place name is defined as a phrase that can be associated with a position or a range on the Earth's surface.From an ontological perspective,some attributes,including occurrence categorization,represented objects,footprints,ambiguity,and temporal characteristics,of general place names are investigated in detail.According to the ontology of GPNs,a logical model is also presented using UML(Unified Modeling Language).The formal definition of GPN will benefit the implementation of digital gazetteers and corresponding services.