Ontology-Based Discovering of Geographic Databases Content

Nowadays, the amount of geographic data is permanently increasing. One key issue to take advantage of these data is to be able to evaluate their fitness for use and their complexity. We describe in this paper a system enabling a user to discover the content of geographic databases based on a formalization of their specifications, i.e. enabling the user to discover which entities of interest are represented in a given database, and how they are represented. The system uses a global ‘domain’ ontology describing the topographic real world entities, which can be queried by the user to express his/her needs. Some local (or application) ontologies are used to formalize the content of database specifications. They are annotated with concepts from the global ontology. The described system is implemented as a web application and includes a web mapping solution for the visualization of data samples.