Ontology-Based Geographic Data Set Integration

Geographic data set integration is particularly important for update propagation, i.e. the reuse of updates from one data set in another data set. In this thesis geographic data set integration (also known as map integration) between two topographic data sets, GBKN and TOP10vector, is described. GBKN is a large-scale topographic data set and TOP10vector is a medium-scale topographic data set. Geographic data set integration (or map integration) is defined as ‘the process of establishing links between corresponding object instances in different, autonomously produced, geographic data sets of the same geographic space’. Corresponding object instances are semantically similar. Semantically similar means that corresponding object instances refer to the same terrain situation. In the first part of this thesis a general introduction to geographic data set integration is given. Relevant literature is reviewed. In the second part a conceptual framework for geographic data set integration is developed. Two important components of this framework are a domain ontology and a set of surveying rules. A domain ontology is important because it contains a set of shared concepts. It is this set of shared concepts of terrain situations that makes it possible to detect corresponding object instances.