ABSTRACT

Geovisualisation is a knowledge-intensive art in which both providers and users need to possess a wide range of knowledge. Current syntactic approaches to presenting visualisation information lack semantics on the one hand, and on the other hand are too bespoke. Such limitations impede the transfer, interpretation, and reuse of the geovisualisation knowledge. In this paper, we propose a knowledge-based approach to formally represent geovisualisation knowledge in a semantically-enriched and machine-readable manner using Semantic Web technologies. Specifically, we represent knowledge regarding cartographic scale, data portrayal and geometry source, which are three key aspects of geovisualisation in the contemporary web mapping era, coupling ontologies and semantic rules. The knowledge base enables inference for deriving the corresponding geometries and portrayals for visualisation under different conditions. A prototype system is developed in which geospatial linked data are used as underlying data, and some geovisualisation knowledge is formalised into a knowledge base to visualise the data and provide rich semantics to users. The proposed approach can partially form the foundation for the vision of web of knowledge for geovisualisation.

摘要

地理可视化是一种知识密集型艺术，提供者和用户都需要拥有广泛的知识。当前用于呈现可视化信息的句法方法一方面缺乏语义，另一方面过于定制。这样的限制阻碍了地理可视化知识的转移，解释和重用。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于知识的方法，该方法使用语义Web技术以语义丰富且机器可读的方式正式表示地理可视化知识。具体来说，我们代表有关制图比例尺，数据描述和几何图形来源的知识，这是当代网络制图时代地理可视化的三个关键方面，是本体和语义规则的结合。知识库可以推论得出不同的几何形状和描述，以便在不同条件下进行可视化。开发了一个原型系统，其中将地理空间链接数据用作基础数据，并将一些地理可视化知识形式化为知识库，以可视化数据并向用户提供丰富的语义。提议的方法可以部分地为实现愿景奠定基础地理可视化知识网。