I just lost all notes that I made in a Microsoft Word docx file with OpenOffice. It worked all times as I saved the file but if you close it you will lose them all! I still cannot believe that I again opened a docx file. Guys, there are tons of free and open office tools, and we also have a well standardized office format called ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) . Please do not force people to use just one specific, expensive, buggy, insecure tool from one company…
- Author: janowicz
- Published: Sep 6th, 2009
- Category: Publications
- Comments: None
The Role of Place for the Spatial Referencing of Heritage Data
Abstract The workshop on The Cultural Heritage of Historic European Cities and Public Participatory GIS aims at outlining the challenges to develop a ppGIS which can integrate data from different ages, authorities, and formats. This data ranges from archival catalogs, maps, photographs, film, aural archives over archaeological data to interpretative studies. With respect to spatial resolution, data should be available down to the level of single streets or even specific properties. Instead of a static approach, users should also be able to contribute new data to the system. This raises a couple of questions which are also relevant in a broader context, namely the ontological representation of and reasoning about geographic places. This paper introduces the challenges of modeling places in such a heterogeneous setting, outlines steps towards a three layered solution on how to represent, reference, and reason about geographic places, and finally sketches how to deal with inconsistent and contradictory knowledge.
Janowicz, K. (2009): The Role of Place for the Spatial Referencing of Heritage Data. The Cultural Heritage of Historic European Cities and Public Participatory GIS Workshop. The University of York, UK 17-18 September 2009
RGBLED, Color Management, and FireFox 3.5
Just a short note. if you are using an RGBLED display such as in case of the Dell XPS 16 and you get strange colors looking on your flickr pictures etc using firefox 3.5, you have to deactivate the new color management:
- type about:Config into the address bar
- search for gfx.color_management.mode
- set the value to 0 which deactivates the color management
… restart the browser.
- Author: janowicz
- Published: Aug 6th, 2009
- Category: 52North, Publications, Semantic Enablement
- Comments: None
A Transparent Semantic Enablement Layer for the Geospatial Web
We just finished a substantially extended and rewritten version of the poster accepted for EuroSSC 2009 (update: the paper was accepted, see below):
Abstract Building on abstract reference models, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has established standards for storing, discovering, and processing geographical information. These standards act as basis for the implementation of specific services and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Research on geo-semantics plays an increasing role to support complex queries and retrieval across heterogeneous information sources, as well as for service orchestration, semantic translation, and on-the-fly integration. So fa r, this research targets individual solutions or focuses on the Semantic Web, leaving the integration into SDI aside. What is missing is a shared and transparent semantic enablement layer for Spatial Data Infrastructures which also integrates reasoning services known from the Semantic Web. Focusing on Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) we outline how Spatial Data Infrastructures in general can benefit from such a semantic enablement layer. Instead of developing new semantically enabled services from scratch, we propose to create profiles of existing services that implement a transparent mapping between the OGC and the Semantic Web world.
Janowicz, K. Schade, S., Bröring, A., Keßler, C., and Stasch, C. (2009; forthcomming): A Transparent Semantic Enablement Layer for the Geospatial Web. Terra Cognita 2009 Workshop In conjunction with the 8th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009), October 26, 2009.
Changing Your Mind – Why Not?
Just a short comment. I am always surprised when some people criticize others for changing their mind? Isn’t this what science is about? We should always be flexible enough to learn new things and then change our opinion. What was a right (whatever this means) decision and useful some time ago may be not appropriate in a new context some time later. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we should not try to go new ways or try to develop unconventional solutions for (old) problems simply because all others go the same route again and again. Following our intuition and believes and still being flexible enough to correct them through learning is a strength and not a weakness – doing things simply because ‘this is how things are done’ is.
As one commentator has noted, science proceeds by funerals. (Ian McEwan from ‘What We Believe
but Cannot Prove’) 
.
GeoS 2009 Deadline Extension
Just a short note, the deadline of the Third International Conference on Geospatial Semantics (GeoS 2009) conference has be extended to the August 5th.
- Author: janowicz
- Published: Jul 20th, 2009
- Category: 52North, Publications, Semantic Enablement
- Comments: None
Towards Semantic Enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures
A short paper that we have submitted today as part of the 52° North semantics community (update: it has been accepted for the EuroSSC 2009).
Abstract Based on abstract reference models, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has established standards for the storage, retrieval, and processing of geographical information. These standards act as groundwork for the implementation of concrete services and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Research on geo-semantics plays an increasing role to support complex queries and discovery across heterogeneous information sources, as well as for on-the-fly integration and semantic translation. So far, existing approaches only target individual solutions or focus on the Semantic Web, leaving the integration into SDI aside. What is missing is a common semantic enablement layer on top of spatial data infrastructures which also integrates reasoning services from the semantic web. Focusing on Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) we outline how spatial data infrastructures can benefit from such semantic enablement layer.
Krzysztof Janowicz, Carsten Keßler, Arne Bröring, and Christoph Stasch. Towards Semantic Enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures
Semantic Challenges for Sensor Plug and Play
We just submitted a paper outlining the challanges tiowards a semantic enabled sensor plug and play infrastructre for registering sensors and inserting observations at Sensor Observation Services. Attached is a link to our draft, I will replace it if the paper gets accepted (update: the paper has been accepted, see below).
Abstract The goal of the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is the definition of web service interfaces and data encodings to make sensors discoverable, taskable and accessible on the World Wide Web. The SWE specifications enable a standardized communication and interaction with arbitrary types of sensors and sensor systems. The central concepts within OGC’s Sensor Web architecture are sensors, observations and features of interest. Sensors and their observations can be registered and stored through the Sensor Observation Service (SOS) to make them accessible for clients. So far, mechanisms are missing which guarantee a correct semantic matching between real world entities and the features of interest stored in geo-databases. The same applies for the matching between observations as sensor outputs and the properties of the features of interest. By taking a use case from disaster management, we outline the challenges and demonstrate how semantically annotated SWE data models and service interfaces support correct semantic matching. The result is a roadmap towards a semantically enabled sensor plug \& play within the Sensor Web.
Bröring, A., Janowicz, K., Stasch, C., and Kuhn, W. (2009; forthcoming): Semantic Challenges for Sensor Plug and Play. 9th International Symposium on Web & Wireless Geographical Information Systems (W2GIS 2009). 7-8th December 2009, National Center for Geocomputation (NCG), NUI Maynooth Ireland.
- Author: janowicz
- Published: Jul 5th, 2009
- Category: Publications
- Comments: None
An Agenda for the Next Generation Gazetteer: Geographic Information Contribution & Retrieval
We finally managed to write down our vision for the next generation of gazetteers, the work that has already been done in this area, and point to the missing pieces to make this vision come true. attached is a link to our draft, I will replace it if the paper gets accepted (update: the paper has been accepted, see below).
Abstract: Gazetteers are key components of georeferenced information systems, including applications such as Web-based mapping services. Existing gazetteers lack the capabilities to fully integrate user-contributed and vernacular geographic information, as well as to support complex queries. To address these issues, a next generation gazetteer should leverage formal semantics, harvesting of implicit geographic information — such as geotagged photos — as well as models of trust for contributors. In this paper, we discuss these requirements in detail. We elucidate how existing standards can be integrated to realize a gazetteer infrastructure allowing for bottom-up contribution as well as information exchange between different gazetteers. We show how to ensure the quality of user-contributed information and demonstrate how to improve querying and navigation using semantics-based information retrieval.
Kessler, C., Janowicz, K., and Bishr, M. (2009; forthcoming): An Agenda For The Next Generation Gazetteer: Geographic Information Contribution and Retrieval. In International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems 2009 (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2009)
Reference Systems for Geographic Information: Gazetteer Slides
Attached are the slides for the Gazetteer class on June 29th 2009 as part of the Reference Systems for Geographic Information course. The slides introduce the basic idea behind gazetteers and discuss various existing and forthcoming gazetteers as well as the vision of a inked data infrastructure for place names.