Terra Cognita 2009 Workshop

http://asio.bbn.com/terracognita2009/

In Conjunction with the 8th International Semantic Web Conference,

(ISWC 2009), http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/, near Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

This is a 5 hour workshop on Monday, October 26, 2009.

Workshop Overview

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers in an increasingly growing field of Semantic Web research - geospatial semantics and applications. Enabling synergy between Semantic Web and geospatial researchers encourages spatially-related semantic research on formal methods and better knowledge representations as well as the use of geospatial semantics in applications.

 

There has been a noticeable trend of increased geospatial data and mapping capabilities on the Web, and geospatial information is now greatly enhancing the Web environment. This reflects the fact that society and scientific research are increasingly engaged with geospatial data. However, while many Semantic Web applications may use a map for viewing data, processing spatial relationships requires a deeper level of understanding. Methods for formally representing and processing geospatial information are only now emerging. Also, the semantics for various geospatial domains have not yet been established. Building upper and domain geospatial ontologies is a first step for alleviating the restrictiveness of XML-based and relational database-based schemas. Service interoperability also stands to make significant gains by incorporating Semantic Web technologies.

 

Increased interactions and discussions between the geospatial and Semantic Web communities are likely to provide a base understanding that can contribute to solving important spatial data problems within the Semantic Web. In this regard, the workshop encourages participation from the geospatial community as well as the Semantic Web community. In addition to research papers, we solicit papers detailing applications (i.e., in use papers). The workshop agenda will also include an interactive session in which other audience members can take a couple minutes to talk or present a slide on a relevant topic. The following topics are suggested but not exclusive.

 

Special Guest Speaker

We are very honored to have a short introduction given by Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C.

 

Keynote Speaker

The keynote for our workshop will be presented by E. Lynn Usery, of the United States Geological Survey.  slides

 

Accepted Papers – Available for download: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-518

 

Spatial Planning on the Semantic Web - Radboud Winkels, Rinke Hoekstra and Erik Hupkes.

 

A Qualitative Approach to Vague Spatio-Thematic Query Processing - Rolf Grütter and Thomas Scharrenbach.

 

Semantic Method of Conflation - James Ressler, Eric Freese and Veleria Boaten.

 

The Experience of Realizing a Semantic Web Urban Computing Application - Emanuele Della Valle, Irene Celino and Daniele Dell'Aglio.

 

The Space package: Tight Integration Between Space and Semantics - Willem Robert van Hage, Jan Wielemaker and Guus Schreiber.

 

A Transparent Semantic Enablement Layer for the Geospatial Web - Krzysztof Janowicz, Sven Schade, Arne Broering, Carsten Kessler and Christoph Stasch.

 

Towards Modelling the Intended Purpose of Ontologies: A Case Study in Geography - Ronald Denaux, Anthony Cohn, Vania Dimitrova and Glen Hart.

 

Efficient 3D and 4D Geospatial Indexing in RDF Stores with a Focus on Moving Objects - Jans Aasman, Steve Haflich and Craig Norvell.

 

Suggested Paper Topics

  • Geospatial ontologies, including creation and use
  • Semantic Web research regarding geospatial data
  • Applying Semantic Web technology to spatial data
  • Adding spatial data to Semantic Web applications
  • Techniques for processing spatial data within the Semantic Web
  • Semantic issues in geospatial standards
  • Domain-oriented GIS applications that leverage Semantic Web technology
  • Survey delineating the value-added use of geospatial ontologies
  • Handling spatial data within formal ontology languages
  • Overview of the research landscape regarding geospatial and semantics
  • Semantic geospatial services

 

Paper Submission

Submissions (http://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=terra09) will be handled using the EasyChair system. Papers must be formatted in the style of the Springer Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (Information for LNCS Authors, http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0) Formatted papers should be approximately 10 pages and must represent new work. All submissions will be reviewed by three members of the program committee. At least one author must register to present an accepted paper. We are working on the possibility of having selected papers be considered for journal publication.

 

Dates

Submissions: 7 August

Acceptances: 4 Sept

Camera Ready: 30 September

 

Organizing Committee

Terra Cognita 2009 is organized by members of the Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCoP, http://www.socop.org/). SOCoP is a geospatial semantics interest group currently with members from U.S. federal agencies, academia, and industry. The group is open to anyone, and international collaborations are welcome. The goal of SOCoP is to foster collaboration among users, technologists, and researchers of spatial knowledge representations and reasoning towards the development of a set of core, common geospatial ontologies for use by all in the Semantic Web.

 

Registration Information

 ISWC will be held 25-29 October 2009 at the Westfields Conference Center near Washington, DC. The main ISWC site is  http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/, and you can find registration information on that site. Early registration closes 12 September 2009.

 

http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/wiki/index.php/ISWC_2009_Registration

 

Rates

Reflecting different costs, we offer a $25/day discount to those staying at the Westfields Marriott.

Workshops and Tutorials (Full Day or 2 Half Days), Doctoral Consortium

Staying at Westfields

Staying Elsewhere

$155

$180

Attendees must also register for the Main Conference.

Main Conference

Early Registration by 12 September 2009

Staying at Westfields

Staying Elsewhere

Student

$630

$705

Academic/Government/Military/Exhibitor

$880

$955

Regular

$1,080

$1,155

 

You can see information on this and other workshops at:

http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/wiki/index.php/ISWC_2009_Workshops

 

Related Events

Immediately following ISWC, the first NeoGeoVoCamp will be held, to discuss and develop lightweight ontologies for geospatial representations on the Semantic Web. More information can be found here: http://vocamp.org/wiki/NeoGeoVoCampOctober2009

 

 

 

Workshop Chairs

Nancy Wiegand, University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA, wiegand@cs.wisc.edu

Dave Kolas, BBN Technologies, USA, dkolas@bbn.com

Gary Berg-Cross, Engineering Management & Integration, USA, gbergcross@gmail.com

 

Program Committee Members

Glen Hart, Ordnance Survey, UK

Dan Adams, Scitor Corp, USA

Ola Ahlqvist, Ohio State University, USA

Harry Chen, Siri, Inc., USA

Isabel Cruz, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Mike Dean, BBN Technologies, USA

Max Egenhofer, University of Maine, USA

John Goodwin, Ordnance Survey, UK

Sergei Levashkin, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico

Joshua Lieberman, Traverse Technologies, USA

Michael Lutz, European Commission-DG Joint Research Center, Italy

Florian Probst, SAP Research, Germany

James Ressler, Northrop Grumman, USA

Angela Schwering, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Kathleen Stewart, University of Iowa, USA

Dalia Varanka, United States Geological Survey, USA

James Wilson, James Madison University, USA

Naijun Zhou, University of Maryland, USA