Abstract

An Ontology-Driven Framework and Web Portal for Spatial Decision Support
Track: Education and Training
Authors: Naicong Li, Robert Raskin, Krzysztof Janowicz, Michael Goodchild

Developing reusable and interoperable spatial decision support (SDS) systems and tools depends on a comprehensive understanding of the domain of spatial decision support, including the identification of the fundamental granules of SDS. We present the results of a large-scale project by the SDS Consortium that aims to develop a conceptual framework to capture the body of knowledge in SDS using ontologies, and a semantic-enabled and ontology-driven Web portal to allow access to this body of knowledge. The resulting SDS ontologies provide an integrated, systematic way of organizing essential concepts in SDS, and a standard way to specify and register SDS tools and models, thus promoting interoperability among them. The portal also serves as a source for SDS learning material and project resources. Our work demonstrates how ontologies and semantic technologies can support the documentation and retrieval of dynamic knowledge in GIScience by offering flexible schemata instead of fixed data structures.