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International Journal of Geographical Information
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Ontological considerations in GIScience
P. Agarwal Corresponding author
To cite this article: P. Agarwal Corresponding author (2005) Ontological considerations in

GIScience, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 19:5, 501-536, DOI:
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International Journal of Geographical Information Science
Vol. 19, No. 5, May 2005, 501–536
Review Article
Ontological considerations in GIScience
P. AGARWAL*
School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
(Received 18 January 2004; in final form 19 August 2004 )
Ontology is a significant research theme in GIScience. While some researchers

believe that the progress in GIScience is being directed through an engagement
with the concept of ontology, some dismiss it as irrelevant. This paper is aimed at
(i) exploring the theoretical and practical roles of ontologies; (ii) making the
definitions and terminology explicit; (iii) assessing the applicability of ontology to
problems in the geographical domain; and (iv) assessing whether a unified
approach to ontology exists in GIScience. The results will be helpful for
GIScientists in (i) understanding the validity of employing ontology within their
own work, (ii) assessing what operational framework of terms and methods to
use for developing their own ontology, and (iii) to assess what existing
ontological models are available and applicable within their domain or
application. A comprehensive and critical review will also help in identifying
the signficant issues and directing future research agenda in GIScience.
Keywords: Ontology; Geographic; Semantics; Concepts; Inter-operability
1. Introduction
‘The field of ontology, or as it may otherwise be termed, the field of supremely
abstract entities, is a yet untrodden labyrinth.’ (Bentham 1843: 195 from Hart
1982)
Inter-operability is a key concern in GIScience for the sharing of geographic

information (Harvey et al. 1999, Riedemann and Kuhn 1999) that can be facilitated
through a seamless translation between different information sources (Visser and
Stuckenschmidt 2002) that are then ‘able to operate in conjunction’ with each other
(OED 2003). Inter-operability issues can exist at several levels, whereby conflicts can
arise between different information sources at the syntactic, structural or semantic
level in the data sources (Sheth 1999). Ontology has been discussed in GIScience as a
standardization procedure through which easier translation between different
information sources can be achieved (Chandrasekaran et al. 1999, Smith 1999,
Fonseca et al. 2002). In GIScience, ontology is also applied as a systematic approach
to capture the universal concepts and meanings that define the geo-spatial domain
to prescribe theories for the discipline (Bateman 2003, Bittner and Smith 2003,
Frank 2003a). Ontology is also used to inform designs of data models and
information systems to make them better equipped for handling geographic
concepts (Camara et al. 2000, Jones et al. 2001, Kuhn 2001, Fonseca et al. 2002,
Timpf 2002).
*Corresponding author. Email: pragya@comp.leeds.ac.uk

International Journal of Geographical Information Science
ISSN 1365-8816 print/ISSN 1362-3087 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13658810500032321
502 P. Agarwal
Geographic ontologies are receiving increasing interest and are growing in

significance. The considerable number of papers devoted to geographic ontologies at
recent GIScience conferences (e.g. GIScience 2002 and COSIT 2003) and the
organization of a series of ‘Ontology in Geographical domain’ workshops are
indicative of the increasing enthusiasm and participation in this subject among
GIScientists. However, the use of ontology in GIScience has also been associated
with confusion concerning the semantic and terminological implications of this
approach to the overall scientific paradigm in the discipline. Hunter (2002: 83)
claimed ‘… there is little doubt that average GIS user finds them [ontologies]
confusing …’, and Winter (2001), in his editorial, asked the reader to decide whether
ontology is a buzzword or a paradigm shift for GIScience.
Currently, there is no comprehensive ontology for the geo-spatial domain, and it is
recognized that there are no definitive methods for ontology derivation available to the
geographic community (Timpf 2002). Since GIScience is itself an evolving discipline,
the boundaries of, and within, this discipline are not yet well defined. There is a distinct
lack of an integrated scientific framework of commonly accepted terms and methods
that are needed to establish GIS as a science. Moreover, GIScience is a multi-
disciplinary initiative, and methods in ontology design are informed from develop-
ments across various disciplines, including Information Science and Artificial
Intelligence (AI). The specific nature of geographic information (Smith and Mark
1998), formed through cognitive associations and spatio-temporal references, makes it
crucial that the methods suitable for the specific needs of the geographic discipline are
developed. It is also important that a common framework for ontology development in
GIScience is determined so that all research initiatives can work in conjunction with
each other and contribute to the development of a shared resource.
Comprehensive reviews of ontological methods and approaches have been carried
out before from a software-engineering approach (Uschold and Jasper 1999) and from
an information science perspective (Fernandez-Lopez 1999). However, a review
relevant to the geographical domain has not been conducted before now. Most research
papers in GIScience that have focused on ontologies, have included a review of related
work and definitions. However, as can be expected, this limits itself to defining the
framework for that particular research application and does not include a review of all
methods and approaches that are available and those commonly adopted. A
comprehensive review, besides demonstrating the understanding of ontologies in the
geographic context, will also enable an informed decision concerning the potential of
ontology as a means to ‘shared concept’ (Frank 1997, Kuhn 2003a) and as the ‘only way
to link models to external world and to each other’ (Winter 2001: 588).
There is a need to re-examine the methods for ontology design in AI and in
philosophy for their applicability to the geographic domain, and to develop methods
that address the specific needs of the geographic domain. The key points addressed
in this paper are:
1. How robust is the understanding of ontology in the GIScience community?
2. Is the use of ontology leading to a defined research framework and scientific
paradigm in GIScience?
3. What are the main issues related to the development and use of ontology in
the geo-spatial context?
The focus is on making the definition and practices, both good and bad, explicit and on
proposing a common framework for ontology development. This is achieved through a
Ontological considerations in GIScience 503
critical examination of the three distinct approaches to ontology development and

design, (1) philosophical and metaphysical (2) data modelling, and (3) ontological
engineering, and by re-evaluating them with specific reference to the geo-spatial
domain. Generic concepts and issues are identified that can direct the formulation of a
common research agenda in designing geographic ontologies.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Basic terminology in the use of
ontology is introduced and clarified, along with a discussion on the types of
ontology, in section 2. In section 3, the discussion is focused on the application and
development of ontology in the geographic context, and key issues are identified.
Different perspectives exist on ontology and result in various models and tools. The
ways that they have influenced research directions are discussed, along with their
adaptability to the specific needs of this discipline. In section 4, the key
considerations for development of geo-spatial ontologies are highlighted. A
summary of major issues along with a discussion on future research directions is
provided in section 5, and section 6 contains concluding remarks.
2. What is ontology?
Ontology began as a philosophical tradition but has found widespread application in
many diverse disciplines. The interpretation of ontology varies across different
disciplines; the primary divergence exists between the philosophical (or meta-physical)
approach and the AI (or information system) approach. Other confusions in defining
and applying ontology lie in the unclear distinctions between ontology and ontologies,
ontology and knowledge base, and ontology and epistemology.
In logic, the existential quantifier ’ is a notation for asserting that something
exists, but logic itself has no vocabulary for describing the things that exist.
Ontologies fill this gap; they are used to study the existence of all kinds of entities,
abstract and concrete, that make up the world (Sowa 2000). In the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED), ontology is defined as belonging to the ‘metaphysical
department’ and as the ‘science or study of being’ (OED 2003). From WordNet
(WORDNET 1998), the meaning of ontology can be extracted as the ‘metaphysical
study of the nature of being and existence’. The first recorded attempt at a complete
ontology of reality is believed to be by Aristotle in 340 BC, in his seminal work
‘Categories’ (Mann 2000), later adopted by Plato. Aristotle regards the reality as ‘all
the species of being qua being and the attributes which belong to it qua being’
(Aristotle Metaphysics IV.1, from Guarino and Giaretta 1995: 26). This study of
explaining reality by breaking it down into concepts, relations and rules has since
come to be known as ontology (Audi 1995). It was brought into prominence in the
eighteenth century by Christian Wolff (1679–1750), a German rationalist, for whom
it was a deductive discipline leading to necessary truths about the essences of beings.
Although these views on ontology as a deductive system were refuted later by Kant
(1724–1804), with the 20th century renovation of metaphysics, ontology or
ontological thought has again become important, notably among phenomenologists
and existentialists. This specification of ‘what constitutes reality’ forms the basis of
an ontology described from a philosophical perspective (Smith 1995b). However, no
clear criterion for what constitutes ‘being’ and how to identify it is defined. Even
Quine’s (1992) famous criterion for ‘being’ (‘to be is to be the value of a quantified
variable’) is criticized for lack of specificity. The philosophical ontology is presented
in the form of taxonomies or hierarchical classifications and is representative of the
world in total. In this context, Husserl’s work (Smith 1989, Poli 1993, Smith and
504 P. Agarwal
Woodruff 1995) on formal ontology is important, providing two-layered distinc-

tions between material and logic-oriented perspectives on metaphysical ontology;
instantiating meanings as significant in ontology, and forming the basis of formal
traditions in ontology development. Some of these developments in formal ontology
are discussed, with specific reference to GIScience, in section 3.
There is also a domain-specific and user-dependent view on ontology. Sowa
(2000: 15) defines ontology as ‘the method to extract a catalogue of things or entities
(C) that exist in a domain (D) from the perspective of a person who uses a certain
language (L) to describe it’. As opposed to the realist view, the domain-specific
perspective on ontology is the underlying principle for its application in information
science and knowledge engineering (KE). One of the earliest definitions for ontology
from the KE perspective is that it ‘defines the basic terms and relations comprising
the vocabulary of a topic area as well as the rules for combining terms and relations
to define extensions to the vocabulary’ (Neches et al. 1991: 37). Guarino and
Giaretta (1995) have provided a further terminological clarification between the uses
of ontology variously as an ‘informal conceptual system’, a ‘formal semantic
account’, a ‘specification of a conceptualisation’, a ‘representation of a conceptual
system via a logical theory’, the ‘vocabulary used by a logical theory’, and a
‘specification of a logical theory’. Borst et al. (1997: 365) extend on Gruber’s
definition that states that ‘ontologies are defined as a formal specification of a
shared conceptualization’, and Swartout et al. (1996: 38) state that ‘an ontology is a
hierarchically structured set of terms for describing a domain that can be used as a
skeletal foundation for a knowledge base’. Studer et al. (1998: 163) provide an
explication of the terms commonly employed for defining ontologies from AI
perspectives: ‘conceptualisation’ is explained as an abstract model of some
phenomenon in the world by having identified the relevant concepts of that
phenomenon; ‘explicit’ means that the type of concepts used and the constraints on
their use are explicitly defined; ‘formal’ refers to the fact that the ontology should be
machine-readable; and ‘shared’ refers to the notion that an ontology captures
consensual knowledge (that is, it is not primitive to some individual, but accepted by
a group). An ontology is, therefore, the manifestation of a shared understanding of
a domain that is agreed between a number of agents, and such agreement facilitates
accurate and effective communications of meaning, which in turn leads to other
benefits such as inter-operability, reuse and sharing.
The key aspect of ontology application in AI is not as a deductive argument for
defining the reality, but for an explication of terms and meanings to define a
consensual foundation for inter-operability in the domain. As opposed to the
philosophical perspective, there is no ‘absolute truth’ in the AI perspective; the
specification in the ontology is user-dependent and is developed as a mechanism to
achieve a state of agreement on the different interpretations of the reality. The two
perspectives on ontology provide different principles and approaches for ontology
design and development, and both have informed the application of ontology in the
GIScience discipline.
2.1 Ontology and ontologies

The different ways that ontology is understood, and the different ways that the
notion is expressed (primarily lower-case/upper-case and singular/plural distinc-
tions) cause confusion among the practitioners and researchers, and no consensual
statement is available yet. It is ironic that ontology is proposed as a mechanism for
resolving common semantic frameworks, but a complete understanding and a

shared meaning for ontology itself are yet to be achieved. Guarino and Giaretta
(1995: 26) define ‘O’ntology as ‘the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature
and organisation of reality’, and ‘o’ntology as a determinate specification that is ‘a
logical theory which gives an explicit, partial account of a conceptualisation’. From
a philosophical perspective, the ontology is the ‘concept of a being’ (Frank 1997,
Smith 1998a, Mann 2000, Mark 2000), and the use of plural ‘ontologies’ is irrelevant
as there can be only one ontology. However, in the KE approach, from an AI
perspective, the ontology is not representative of a singular overriding truth, and the
use of plural ontologies is relevant. Another distinction lies in the use of upper-case
‘O’ntology as the discipline dealing with the organization of reality, based on a
metaphysical view; and the lower-case ‘o’ntology as a determinate specification that
is an explicit, partial account of a conceptualization defined by a logical theory in
the domain (Guarino and Giaretta 1995). Sub-distinctions within the lower-case
ontology exist as the singular and plural form as well, ‘ontology’ and ‘ontologies’,
but this is only general usage to distinguish between one and many model
descriptions. This is not a crisp bifurcation, and no noticeable pattern in usage is
observed. It can be resolved partially by stating that both ontology and ontologies
are ‘specifications of conceptualisation’ in specific domain applications; where
ontology is a theoretical and abstract construct for a domain, while ontologies can
be used for formalized axiomatic specification of domain descriptions. Similar
distinctions lie in the use of terms such as top-level, higher-order or generic
Ontology (or ontology), and lower, domain-level ontologies (discussed further in
section 3). In this paper, the lower-case singular ‘ontology’ is employed, with the
capital case used at the beginning of sentences for grammatical reasons, and plural
‘ontologies’ used to denote multiple cases.
2.2 Types of ontologies

Uschold and Gruninger (1996) have distinguished four types of ontologies
depending on the kind of language used to implement them. They are: ‘highly
informal ontologies’ if they are written in natural language; ‘semi-formal ontologies’
if they are expressed in a restricted and structured form of natural language (i.e.
using patterns); ‘formal ontologies’, which are defined in an artificial and formally
defined language; and ‘rigorously formal ontologies’ if they are defined in a
language with formal semantics, theories and proofs of properties such as soundness
and completeness. Based on the nature of specification, the distinction is made as
‘General Ontology’ and ‘Special’ or ‘Regional Ontologies’ (Guarino and Giaretta
1995), which corresponds with Husserl’s distinction of ‘Formal Ontology’ and
‘Material Ontology’ (Bunge 1977). Cocchiarella (1991: 641) has defined formal
ontology (FO) as ‘the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the logic of all
forms and modes of being’, and FO is used to define the rigorous distinctions (Poli
1993) between the structural features of entities (physical objects, region, etc.) and
the meta-level categories (role, quality, etc.). In the ‘informal classes’, there are
partially structured definitions in natural language, while in the ‘formal classes’,
there are ontologies defined through artificial formal languages (e.g. Ontolingua) or
through first-order logic (e.g. SNAP–SPAN). These distinctions are based on the
domain of application and the extent of conceptualization.
Yet another distinction, that is not a popular view in GIScience, has been made
from a purely system-oriented perspective for the lower-level ontologies as ‘generic’,
506 P. Agarwal
‘normative’ and ‘descriptive’ ontologies (Curry 2000). Here, the first-order (or
generic) ontologies are bare-bones concepts for the domain, including physical
objects and classes; the second-order (or normative) ontologies are precise and based
on object-substance classification; and the third-order ontologies are descriptive,
consisting of what Curry (2000) refers to as socially constructed or imagined
concepts. Other ontology typologies are based on the nature of the conceptualiza-
tion itself. Mizoguchi et al. (1995) and van Heijst et al. (1996) provide an exhaustive
typology of ontologies. These can be outlined as follows:
1. ‘Knowledge Representation ontologies’ capture the representation primitives
used to formalize knowledge in knowledge representation paradigms. The most
representative example is the Frame-Ontology (Gruber 1993), which captures
the representation primitives (classes, instances, slots, facets, etc.) used in frame-
based languages, and an object-based representation of the world.
2. ‘General’ or ‘Common ontologies’ (Mizoguchi et al. 1995) include vocabulary
related to things, events, time, space, causality, behaviour, function, etc. This
is also part of the distinction provided by Guarino and Giaretta (1995).
3. ‘Meta-ontologies’, also called ‘Generic Ontologies’ or ‘Core Ontologies’, are
reusable across domains. The mereology ontology (Borst et al. 1997) and the
gene-ontology (Gene Ontology Consortium 2003) can be considered as the
most representative examples of the meta-ontology.
4. ‘Domain ontologies’ (DO) are reusable in a given domain. They provide
vocabularies about the concepts within a domain and their relationships, the
activities that take place in that domain, and the theories and elementary
principles governing that domain. ‘Task ontologies’ provide a systematized
vocabulary of the terms used to solve problems associated with tasks that may or
may not be from the same domain, and these are application-oriented ontologies.
5. ‘Reference Ontologies’ are proposed, from the philosophical standpoint as
theories for ‘independently existing realities’ (Smith 1999). On the other hand,
the KE approach follows two distinct approaches: first, where the focus is on
the design of the theory and the rich axiomatization is needed to define the
ontological commitments and second, where the focus is on having an
ontology as a working application using minimum terminology and simple
taxonomies (Guarino and Giaretta 1995). As opposed to formal, axiomatized
ontology that constitutes a detailed description of the domain, ‘reference
ontologies’ serve the purpose of negotiating meanings between communities
by explaining the meaning of terms that are included in the top-level ontology
(Borgo et al. 2002).
6. ‘Linguistic ontologies’ (e.g. Henschel and Bateman 1994) are sometimes
employed to bridge the gap between the philosophical and engineering-
oriented ontologies by relating concepts to natural language and semantics of
the grammatical units. Examples consist of EuroWordNet (Vossen et al.
1997), SENSUS (Knight et al. 1995), Goi-Taikei (Ikehara et al. 1997), and
WordNet (Felbaum 1998).
2.3 Components of an ontology

Uschold et al. (1998) states that ‘an ontology may take a variety of forms, but
necessarily it will include a vocabulary of terms, and some specification of their
meaning’. This includes definitions and an indication of how concepts are
interrelated, which collectively impose a structure on the domain and constrain the
possible interpretations of terms.
In the case of a metaphysical ontology, the three major types of top-level
distinction for real world entities are identified as follows:
1. Universals and Particulars: Realist philosophers in the Aristotelian traditions
distinguish between ‘universals’ (kinds, species, types) and ‘particulars’
(individuals, instances, tokens). The universal–particular distinction forms
the backbone of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) (Grenon and Smith 2004).
2. Endurant–Perdurant: The ‘endurant’ is a kind of entity that endures or
persists through time and is wholly present at each moment of its existence,
while ‘perdurant’ (or occurrant) entities are never fully present at any one
given moment in time, but instead ‘unfold’ themselves in successive phases or
temporal parts (Fielding et al. 2004). Examples of endurants are those
mesoscopic objects such as tables and chairs, people, operating rooms, cells,
and chromosomes. All of these kinds of entities, and all of their parts,
maintain their full identity from one moment to the next. Entities that ‘occur’
are processes or events such as a morning run or cellularization. Endurants
and perdurants have parthood relations, but never relate to each other. For
example, in the SNAP–SPAN ontology (Grenon and Smith 2004), a process-
oriented conceptualization is formed on this basis, where spatial regions,
niches and environments are endurants (SNAP); while actions, social and
physical change, and events are perdurants (SPAN). A ‘nation’ is an endurant,
while its ‘history’ is the perdurant. Similar relationships hold between ‘ocean’
and ‘tide’, and ‘population’ and ‘migration’ (Smith 2002).
3. Independent–dependent: ‘Independent’ entities have the ability to exist
without the ontological support of other entities. These are entities such as
people, tables, or molecules. On the other hand, ‘dependent’ entities require
the existence of these first sorts of entities for their own existence, such as a
viral infection is dependent on the virus and the organism infected (Fielding
et al. 2004).
Maedche and Staab (2001) propose that an ontology comprises a lexicon, concepts,
relations and axioms. From a summary of the different literature (Gruber 1993,
Uschold and Gruninger 1996, Studer et al. 1998, Chandrasekaran et al. 1999, Arpirez et
al. 2001), the primary components of an ontology are summarized as follows:
1. ‘Axioms’ are used to model conditions that are always true for the domain. A
rich axiomatic specification is critical in distinguishing an ontology from a
terminological taxonomy.
2. A ‘class’ or ‘category’ is a set of objects and the basis of knowledge
representation in an ontology. Categories include concepts (Sowa 2000), and
while concepts are linked to cognitive semantics, categories are universal in
the real world. A concept represents a set or class of entities or ‘things’ within
a domain.
3. ‘Relations’ represent types of interactions between the classes (or concepts) in
an ontology. Relations can be taxonomic, where concepts are part of other
concepts with ‘is a kind of’ and partitive relationships. Relations can also be
associative, nominal, locative, functional or causative. Further axiomatic
specifications for relations specify formal relations of mereology, identity,
unity, essence, rigidity and other dependence criteria. In the geographic
508 P. Agarwal
context, topology and mereology are significant relations because of the

spatio-temporal dependence of geographic entities (Smith 1996, Varzi 2001a).
Although ‘semantics’ is not explicitly stated as a primary component in these
specifications, it is a crucial aspect in distinguishing an ontology from a terminological
classification. Semantics are the bridge between language and thought, and imply the
meaning that is attached to real world objects and concepts (Jackendoff 1983). An
ontology can also be designed without including the semantics, but will not be an
explicit ontology. Explicit stating and consideration of semantics allows better merging
and sharing of ontologies. Hence, a semantic content allows for creation of reliable,
consensual ontologies. This is particularly true for the geographic domain where
explicating the meaning is important to resolve heterogeneity and mismatches
occurring in the domain, and is covered in more detail in section 4.1.
3. Ontology applications in GIScience

Ontology is recognized as an emerging research initiative by the University
Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS 1998, Mark et al. in
press). Further discussion on the relevance of ontology in GIScience is provided by
Smith and Mark (1998, 2001). The primary purpose of using ontology in GIScience
is to define a common vocabulary that will allow inter-operability and minimize any
problems with data integration, both from different systems and between users and
systems. Ontology is commonly employed as a method for identifying categories,
concepts, relations and rules (Tversky and Hemenway 1984, Smith and Mark 1998,
Sorrows and Hirtle 1999), to define and conceptualize the knowledge in a domain to
make it easier to model, and to provide standardized vocabulary and rules for
application of this vocabulary. In GIScience, the widely quoted definition of
ontology is a ‘specification of a conceptualisation’ (Gruber 1995: 908), and ontology
is applied as the ‘definition or identification of entities that can act as referents for
capture of the real world’ (Frank 1997, Mark et al. 1999, Peuquet et al. 1999, Milton
and Kazmierczak 2003). Some of the other definitions for ontology, specifically
applied to the GIScience discipline, are: the ‘science of existence’ (Raubal 2001: 655),
the ‘definition of types and categories in all realms of being’ (Smith 2001b: 81), as an
‘abstract definition of the content and rules of behaviour of physical world and the
linkage between physical and conceptual world’ (Smyth 1992: 693), and the ‘entities,
relations and rules that govern a domain’ (Davis 1990: 8). The two distinct
approaches that are followed in GIScience are: (1) the philosophical approach for
identification of top-level categories from a formal ontology perspective, and (2) the
domain-specific and task-oriented approach focused on explicating the actions,
terms and relations for a particular specification and ranging from natural language
to rigorously formal specifications. Sowa (2000: 10) defines ontology as ‘the overall
study of categories of things that might exist in a domain’, while Timpf (2002)
defines a more purpose-driven view where ontologies are simplified views of the
world that we wish to represent ‘for some purpose’, and include concepts that are
relevant to that particular task within the domain.
3.1 Ontology and Epistemology

Although Aristotle himself did not divorce ontology from epistemology, the
constant struggle to distinguish between the two is a key issue in philosophical
inquiry (Spencer 1995) and in the geographic discipline (Frank 2001b, Jones 2003).
Raubal (2001: 658) defines ontology as ‘the content for a domain with definitions of
specific classes of objects and entities existing in that domain’, and epistemology as
‘what is known within that domain along with individual beliefs and knowledge’.
However, this distinction does not follow the metaphysical definition of ontology as
‘the definition of reality’ and the ‘knowledge within a domain’ (Audi 1995).
Historical development in the geographic discipline has been centred essentially on
binary oppositions, either space–time or realist–materialist attitudes. This has meant
that the viewpoints on knowledge generation have constantly wavered between
ontology and epistemology (Jones 2003). Postmodernist philosophical attitudes
towards this debate make these concepts explicitly inter-reducible by arguing that
issues of what constitutes the natural world are equivalent to describing the notion
or idea of what exists in the natural world (Spencer 1995).
Most GIScience research is based in a partly structuralist, partly critical–realist
paradigm. In this approach, the reality in a domain cannot be separated wholly from
the beliefs and thought in the domain, and the distinction between these two
concepts is inherently complex. Parallels can be easily drawn between the notion of
‘epistemic fallacy’ (Bhaskar 1994) and the concepts underlying ‘Naı̈ve Geography’
(in Egenhofer and Mark 1995). Both consider that ‘anything that defines what exists
in the real world is in fact a definition of a particular thought or idea of that reality’.
The ontology–epistemology binary opposition and conflict has been resolved
partially by saying that this distinction is an overall ontological problem, and can be
categorized as such. Guarino and Giaretta (1995) distinguish between ontology as
the ‘determinate interpretation of reality’ and epistemology as the ‘nature and
source of knowledge in the world’. Epistemology has not gained much attention
within GIScience, and with the philosophical realist position dominating the
discipline, the focus has largely been on ontology. In determining geo-spatial
ontologies, the question ‘what exists in a domain’ is not separated explicitly from the
‘theory of how that knowledge was identified and defined’.
3.2 Ontological theory and ontological commitments

From a philosophical realist perspective, ontology is a theory of an ‘independently
existing reality’ and is aimed at being formally rigorous as well as computationally
useful (Smith 1999). Following on from Husserlian theory, the ontology contains the
theory of truth and reference in itself (Smith 1998a). Hence, from a philosophical
perspective, a distinction between ontology and the theory itself is not crisply
demarcated. Guarino and Giaretta (1995: 28) touch on the distinction between an
ontological model and ontological theory, from a KE perspective. Within this
definition, ontology is used as a meta-level specification for the logical theory for the
domain, by defining the set of primitives or components of a theory in that domain, the
logical theory in this case being the set of assertions without the formal annotation and
indexing (Wielinga et al. 1992). In this context, the ontology is not concerned with the
absolute truth in reality, and therefore, the meanings of the terms that are used have to
be made explicit. From this perspective, an ‘ontological theory’ forms the basis for
development of the ontology as a logical theory that makes distinctions between the
different terms with the main purpose to make the meanings clear for the construction
of an ontology (Borgo et al. 1997). Guarino and Giaretta (1995: 28) define ontological
theory as the ‘set of formulas intended to be always true according to a certain
conceptualisation’, and ontology as ‘the logical theory that gives a partial account of
the conceptualisation’. Therefore, the theory is not directly implementable within a
510 P. Agarwal
system, and the ontology is used as a computationally tractable specification to develop

information systems from theoretical basis in the domain. In this way, database
schemas are a kind of ontology for defining the underlying theory in a domain,
although they are limited in the level of axiomatic richness and relation specification
that can be constructed in a database model. A weak theory results in a weak ontology,
and therefore, it is important to have a reliable theoretical development for a rigorous
ontology specification.
Within GIScience, both these approaches have been adopted. The philosophical
influences are much greater in defining the ontological terminology and develop-
ments in the GIScience discipline, and hence the consideration of ontological theory
to be distinct from the ontology has not been a popular approach in GIScience. This
approach, however, is limited in cases where there is no definitive specification and
acceptance of reality, such as in the geographic domain, where the cognitive
conceptualisations imply that there is no ‘independently existing reality’. The
specific nature of geographic information means that the distinction between
ontological theory and ontology has to be re-evaluated and refined according to the
requirements of the geographic domain.
Instead of ontological theory, the focus in geographic ontology applications has
been on explication of the ontological commitments that relate the ontology to
reality (Mark 2000, Mark et al. 2001). Guarino and Giaretta (1995: 27), from a KE
perspective, define ontological commitment as ‘a partial semantic account of the
intended conceptualisation of a logical theory’. ‘Ontological commitment’ is also
used for defining the mutual commitment to a certain set of entities (Eliasmith
2003). Gruber (1995) defines this as the ‘agreement to use the shared vocabulary (in
the ontology) in a coherent and consistent manner’, and as a mechanism to
communicate with each other. Commitment to a common ontology is a guarantee of
consistency but not of completeness, and the knowledge-base of agents participating
in the shared vocabulary is not necessarily shared. According to Guarino (1998), an
ontological commitment should be made explicit when applying the ontology, in
order to facilitate its accessibility, maintainability and integrity. The theory of
ontological commitment is important in making what constitutes reality explicit and
available in an ontology. Ontological commitment, therefore, is synonymous with
ontological theories in the way that both conceptualize the shared logical content of
the domain and the common beliefs across multiple interpretations of the domain.
The theories of ontological commitment also specify the way that this can be done.
In the geographic domain, ontological commitments are used for defining the
‘primary theory’ that is independent of the contextual beliefs and constitutes the
basic naı̈ve beliefs that form the theoretical foundation for all human action and
perception in the real world (Horton 1982, Forguson 1989, Smith and Mark 2001).
The most familiar theory of ontological commitment employed for geographic
ontologies is from Quine’s (1953) ‘on what there is’ (Mark 2000, Mark et al. 1999,
2001). Although ontological commitment has not received a vast amount of
attention in directing ontology design and development, a theory of ontological
commitment is important for determining the consensual foundations that all agents
in the geographic domain can commit to.
3.3 Approaches and methods in the geographic context

The methods and models discussed in this section will showcase the primary
research themes to emerge from the application of ontology in GIScience. Figure 1
Figure 1. Schematic diagram showing connections between Ontology and GIScience. (Colour
version available online.)
shows the connections between ontology and GIScience, and an indication of how
ontology of geography is an important part of the foundation of GIScience. Some of
these connections will become clearer from the following discussions.
In the geographic domain, discussion of knowledge generation and consequently
the use of ontology has primarily targeted the following questions: (1) what are the
geographic categories and context and (2) what are the semantics associated with
these concepts to make their definition unequivocally explicit? The three main
applications of ontology in the GIScience discipline that are apparent from a review
of the related literature are:
1. ontology for knowledge generation,
2. ontology for domain specification, and
3. ontology for information system development.
These have translated into the following research themes: (1) methods for linking
application-oriented ontologies to the real world (Timpf and Volta 1992, Raubal
et al. 1997, Mark et al. 1999); (2) attempts to define an overall ontology to
encapsulate all concepts, processes, and scales (both spatial and temporal) in a single
framework (Smith and Medin 1981, Smith 1995a, Frank 1997, 2001a, 2003a); and
(3) the methods for formalizing spatial and temporal relations and hierarchies from
the real world, at both the conceptual and operational level (Cohn 1997, Bennett
1998, 2001b, Guarino 1998, Bittner 2002, Bittner and Stell 2002, Grenon 2003). The
primary ontology initiatives in GIScience are aimed either at developing a
comprehensive geo-spatial ontology or at modelling certain specialized tasks. In
the second category, the focus is on application-oriented or purpose-driven
ontologies, and human actions and behaviour in a specific sub-domain are of
primary consideration to develop systems that are based on an understanding of
human reasoning and decision-making. The philosophical approach in GIScience,
on the other hand, aims at finding a top-level overall ontology for the geo-spatial
domain that can form a unifying framework for all concepts shared within the
geographic community.
3.3.1 Top-level ontologies. Most top-level ontologies are organized into hierarch-
ical concepts. In the GIScience domain, a distinct dual ontology in the binary
tradition is proposed by Grenon and Smith (2004). Frank (2001a) proposes a tiered
512 P. Agarwal
structure for a top-level ontology as an alternative approach. The tiers comprise

human-independent reality (the philosophical realism), observations of the physical
world, object with properties, social reality, and subjective knowledge. This is a
layered approach to include different aspects of geographic reality, both physical
and social, and parallels can be drawn with the ‘layers’ model of ontology proposed
by Donnelly and Smith (2003). The ‘semantic reference system’ (Kuhn 2003a) is also
proposed as a top-level ontology including all shared concepts, although it results in
a pragmatic, operational ontology aimed chiefly at design of inter-operable
information systems across a particular application domain. Abstract and
theoretical conceptualizations are based primarily in metaphysical distinctions of
entities as ‘continuants’ and ‘occurrants’ in the real world (Simons 1987, Smith
2001b, Masalo et al. 2003b).
The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) that is a definition of the ‘mesoscopic’ world
and comprises three categories: theory of part and whole, theory of dependence and
theory of boundary, continuity and contact (Smith 1998a) is modelled as SnapBFO
and SpanBFO (Smith 1995a, 1998a), which are ‘abstract’ entities. The SNAP–SPAN
ontology proposes a top-level conceptual framework following on from the binary
distinction of ‘occurrants–continuants’ (Grenon and Smith 2004), where SNAP–
SPAN entities do not coincide since the SPAN and SNAP entities denote a four-
dimensional and three-dimensional perspective, respectively, on the real world.
Although a ‘meta-ontology’ links them together, and ‘trans-ontologies’ as links and
partial entities have also been proposed (Grenon and Smith 2004) to bridge this gap,
this dual categorization does not completely fulfil the desiderata for an integrated
spatio-temporal ontology needed for a geographic ontology (Galton 2003b). The
application of SNAP–SPAN in the geo-spatial domain has been performed by
extending it into a Geo-ontology framework, where the basic framework is used to
define sub-ontologies for geographic objects, field, and processes, and a concept of
‘geo-regions’ is used to handle spatial, temporal and integrated spatio-temporal
regions. The catalogue includes five major categories of SNAP entities: features,
artefacts, agents, places, and qualities. The SNAP ontology also includes ontology
for geographic fields and relies on the object–field distinction in geographic
representation for this distinction. Within the SPAN ontology, the geographic
processes are included, and further distinctions are made based on the kind of
participants (social and physical) involved and the nature of change (substantial,
qualitative, structural or morphological). These are then projected onto the type of
spatio-temporal region that they create and occupy.
Other ontologies that have furnished this top-level ontology with specific
relational axioms include the ‘ontology of boundaries’ (Smith 2001a, Galton
2003a), with distinctions into fiat and bona fide boundaries, and ontology for
mereology and topology to define relations between objects in the real world
(Winston et al. 1987, Jackendoff 1991, Smith 1994, 1996, Casati and Varzi 1999).
However, with the indeterminate nature of geographic entities and processes, both
within human conceptualizations and in the languages that are used to describe
them, it is difficult to envisage a distinctly divided reality as proposed by the SNAP–
SPAN ontology. The indeterminate nature of geographic reality and entities is only
one issue, the other major issue being the dependence on time. Most classical
ontologies are static taxonomies. In SNAP–SPAN, this has been difficult to
incorporate, and although certain efforts such as Reitsma and Bittner (2003)
attempt a process-oriented view, the definition of process in a first-order predicate
language such as that used in BFO is not complete (Frank 2003b). On the other
hand, Frank (2003a) adopts a more pragmatic standpoint that is not based on
metaphysical traditions, but is influenced by human conceptualization through
language structures and descriptors. It is not based in an independently existing
reality. Nevertheless, it comprises higher-order primitives as a foundation for lower-
level concepts, attempts to define a framework for concepts and relations applicable
to all geographic processes and phenomena, and hence qualifies as a top-level
ontology. This linguistically justified top-level ontology has its precedence in a tiered
ontology proposed earlier by Frank (2001a).
Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) is constructed as an upper level
knowledge-base and is limited to meta-generic concepts that are adequate to address
a broad range of domain areas (Pease and Niles 2002, Pease et al. 2002). The major
top-level formal ontologies included within SUMO are: (1) the top-level ontology
of Sowa (1995) and Russell and Norvig (1995), (2) temporal axioms (Allen 1983,
Allen and Hayes 1985), (3) the formal theory of holes (Casati and Varzi 1994),
(4) ontology of boundaries (Smith and Varzi 1997), and (5) ontology for formal
mereotopology (Guarino 1995, Borgo et al. 1997). Concepts from specific domains
are not included but can be constructed using the concepts available within this
generic ontology. A few of the concepts included here that are relevant to the
geographic domain are topological relations, dimensions, latitude and longitude, and
political subdivisions. Additional resources on elevation, linked to terrain ontology,
are currently under development. A Middle Level Ontology (MILO) is also under
development that is expected to bridge the gap between SUMO and domain-level
ontologies. First-order logic based on a knowledge interchange format (KIF) has
been used for the development of this ontology that includes declarative semantics,
and is implemented to allow for easier merging from diverse sources. This ontology
is hierarchical in nature but by no means complete. It is also restrictive in
considering space and time as static and linear aspects.
3.3.2 Domain-specific ontologies. Kuhn’s (2001) ‘task-oriented ontologies’
emerge from the standpoint that the knowledge in a domain depends on what it
is used for, and hence the ontology for a GIS model will admit only entities that are
needed for the functions to be performed in the GIS. This is a user-oriented
perspective, based in realist assumptions and in individual differences, and is
concerned with finding universal common sets for the whole of the geographic
domain. Such ontologies are not based in the metaphysical notion of an absolute
independent reality but are emerging from requirements and syntax in the model,
and are focused on defining the categories and relations within a specific area of
application.
Since the domain ontologies do not constitute the philosophically motivated,
independent reality, the context in which the reality is defined (i.e. the nature of the
ontological commitment) has to be made explicit. The methods for defining the links
between the hierarchies and taxonomies in the ontology to reality, to resolve the
question of ‘where to take the ontology’ from, and to specify the assumptions that
are deployed within the operational framework, have been termed ‘grounding’
mechanisms (Uschold and Gruninger 1996, Kuhn 2000). So far, proposed ‘grounding
methods’ have included: (1) cognitive anchors (Tversky and Hemenway 1984, Lakoff
1987), (2) texts (Kuhn 2001), (3) actions and activities (Camara et al. 2000, Kuhn 2001),
(4) linguistics (Talmy 1983, Taylor 1995, WORDNET 1998), and (5) semantics (Rosch
1973, Keil 1979, Lakoff 1988, Kuhn 2003b). More specific proposals have included
514 P. Agarwal
grounding ontologies in ‘affordances’ (Kuhn 1996) and in ‘image-schemata’ (Mark

1989, Raubal et al. 1997) using visual perception and experience, adapted from
Gibson’s (1986) ecological ‘affordances’, as a means to developing geographic
categorization and task-oriented hierarchies. The grounding in texts has been applied
primarily in transportation modelling (Kuhn 2001), where concepts for activities and
actions are extracted from texts and documents used in decision-making environments.
It is assumed that these texts are based on shared meanings, and can characterize the
‘optimum’ concepts that are needed for defining the actions and tasks in a specific
domain. Methods of text analysis and mining are usually employed to extract common
terms and their hierarchical relations, and the meanings are based in universally
accepted linguistic predicates.
Linguistic grounding is based in the notion that language is a means of
partitioning entities and categories and describing the domain, and the knowledge
contained within a domain can be described by identifying the prototypical instances
representative of categories and relations. Language is inherently vague (Couclelis
1988, Burns 1991) and is further compounded by the inherent vagueness in the
geographic domain (Couclelis 1996, McGee 1997, Fisher 2000). This method is
therefore less reliable than the grounding in the meanings rather than in the
descriptor itself. Semantic grounding (Kuhn 2003a) is based on the meanings that
are assigned to concepts and in finding agreement in meanings that an inter-
operable data framework and system design can be based upon. Since, in the
geographic domain, the common meanings of concepts and terms are still under
debate (Bennett 2001c, Varzi 2001b, Smith and Mark 2003), ‘elicited’ methods rely
on human-subject experiments and cognitive testing to extract categories, concepts
and meanings that exist within individual cognitive frameworks (Mark et al. 1999,
Smith and Mark 1999, Agarwal 2004). These ‘elicited ontologies’ (Brogaard et al.
1999) are based to a certain extent on the work of Quine (1953) for using logical
methods to extract embodied ontological commitments.
In GIScience, the understanding of human behaviour has been an active area of
research interest, and several ontologies have been developed for applications in
wayfinding and navigational systems. Similar to the action-perspective on
ontologies taken by Camara et al. (2000), Kuhn (2001) proposes a framework for
ontologies for modelling activities by considering examples of texts and documents
providing information on the German Traffic code. Timpf and Volta (1992) and
Timpf (2002) adopted a user-oriented perspective of the real world in developing
ontologies from the traveller’s perspective. These ontologies are still in the design
stage, providing directions but not yet implemented in information system and
navigational services.
As well as forming a basis for defining user-oriented models, ontologies have also
informed the design of more effective data models and information systems in the
geographic context. TRIPOD (Griffths et al. 2001), as an object model, has not
explicitly considered ontology. However, the approach used in TRIPOD for
identifying basic primitives for spatial data types and semantics, along with the
temporal histories, to define the model, is similar to an ontological commitment.
The integration of ontology in the design of GIS (Fonseca and Egenhofer 1999,
Fonseca et al. 2002) is proposed within an object-oriented environment, where the
ontologies form an independent class consisting of a dynamic structure that can be
navigated to select objects and nodes to be operated on. Other concerted efforts to
provide standardization in the geographic domain include ‘The Authoritative
Topographic Cartographic Information System’ (ATKIS) which is an initiative,

under the German federal government, to construct a set of standards for the
development of topographic and cartographic products (Ruther et al. 2000, AdV
2001). However, ATKIS only provides a catalogue of concepts used for
cartographic and topographic products as a resource for sharing terms and
concepts. No meanings are made explicit in ATKIS, and no relations and axioms
are prescribed to define links between the different concepts within it. The US
voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system is administered and
co-ordinated by the American National Standards Initiative (ANSI 2003).
Geography is one of the categories in ANSI, but the standards do not provide
any guidance on semantics, rules, relations, and hierarchies for the terms included in
the catalogue. A comprehensive ontology for the geo-spatial domain is still
indiscernible. In addition, none of the methods reviewed above have indicated an
integrated framework that can be used across the geographic domain in different
contexts for managing different kinds of information.
Because of problems in scientific validation of abstract and temporal concepts,
categories, rules and relations, theoretical ontologies for modelling geographic
phenomenona, formalized approaches, which are informed by both philosophical
traditions and the knowledge-engineering and computer science disciplines, are
being successful in proposing operational ontologies. Rules in procedural logic are
also applied to develop formalized top-level ontologies. As mentioned before, Basic
Formal Ontology (BFO) is one such ontology of the overall truth in the world that
has been extended to include geographic categories (Smith 1995a, 1998b, Ruther
et al. 2000, Bittner and Smith 2002, 2003). Others include functional logic
approaches and ontologies that are partly theoretical and partly formalized, aimed
at including qualitative human reasoning in the real world (Bennett 1996, Cohn and
Gotts 1996, Galton 2001, Grenon 2003). Most of the domain-specific ontologies
have included a formalized presentation of the relations and rules, in a functional
(Gerding et al. 2000), procedural (Kuhn 1996, Raubal 2001), or object-oriented
modelling environment (Foncseca et al. 2002).
Web-based inter-operability is a key concern to GIScientists for sharing and
disseminating geographic resources over the web. Several standardization initiatives
have resulted in frameworks that are primarily syntactical in approach, and are
available to provide a standard set of terms and classes for specification of any
domain. Although there is debate whether such taxonomies can be termed
ontologies (Smith 2002), they provide resources for the development of geographic
ontologies by allowing re-use of concepts available within the schema.
On the one hand, delivery of geographical information over the World Wide Web
(WWW) needs clarity in the meaning of geographic terms and the development of
shared ontologies. On the other hand, it also needs compatibility with the syntactic
construct and the concepts available within the mark-up languages used for the
WWW. For achieving semantic inter-operability in the GIS context, several
languages and technologies have been proposed. Problems associated with the
semantic heterogeneity of geographic data and web delivery have been discussed and
solutions indicated by Lutz et al. (2003). A concerted effort towards building
computing standards for inter-operability in the geo-processing domain has been
made by the OpenGIS consortium (OGC 2003). The proposed Geography Markup
Language (GML) is a set of specifications based on the Extendible Markup
Language (XML) for encoding geographic features and their properties, including
516 P. Agarwal
geometric concepts. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is directing initiatives
for the development of an inter-operable web. The ‘Semantic Web’ is the use of the
WWW to create a network of data resources (Palmer 2001). It uses Universal
Resource Locators (URLs) for naming, XML for interchange syntax and Resource
Definition Framework Schema (RDF-S) for basic facts and descriptions. The
Ontology Web Language (OWL) allows for better inter-operability of content over
the web by providing more formal semantics as compared with that provided by
RDF-S and XML (McGuinness and vanHarmelen 2003), and is more appropriate
for building web-based ontologies within a common semantic framework.
The Ontology Interface Language (OIL) is an initiative to provide a common
mark-up language for the web and integrates description logic, frame-based
representations and semantics (Bechhofer et al. 2000, OIL 2001). The aim is to
increase the expressiveness and provide a flexible framework for integration of
various higher-order concepts and ontologies into one framework. ‘OntoWeb’ is
another initiative to provide an ontology-based information exchange for knowl-
edge management over the WWW. Besides providing a context-management
interface, it also builds on the catalogue of concepts provided by the ‘Semantic Web’
standardization efforts of the IEEE Standard Upper Ontology (SUO) Group
and extends to a large common ontology of more than 20,000 concepts (OntoWeb
2003). The Ontology is provided in both XML and RDF format, although it is
proposed to be extended to include OWL (Sure et al. 2002). The Darpa Agent
Mark-up Language (DAML) is being developed as an extension to the XML and
the RDF-S language and schemas, and the version DAML+OIL is aimed at
providing a framework for developing inter-operable ontologies with more specific
definitions for primitives and concepts than those included in OWL. The ontologies
in DAML are not necessarily standards but mostly links to resources providing
standards and include links to spatial reasoning resources. DAML-map provides an
ontology along with a render-independent software designed to extend the
applicability of semantic web for Internet-based mapping and semantic inter-
operability of geo-spatial data and services. It is being extended to link with
common GIS frameworks by designing a program to convert map ontology into
vector shapes. This ontology consists of classes and property hierarchies and is
currently able to handle only points as concepts, but efforts are ongoing to include
polygons and polylines within the same foundational ontology. The ontology has
been designed as such so that it can be developed and modelled within the GML
schema developed by the OpenGIS initiatives, providing a standardization across
cartographic applications.
The ‘WonderWeb’ initiative (Masolo et al. 2003b) is aimed at providing an
ontology infrastructure for the web with standardized tools that allow flexibility and
also sharing and merging of concepts. It aims to have a library of different module
ontologies reflecting different commitments and purposes, rather than a single over-
riding ontology for the whole of the Semantic Web. This is aimed at making the
assumptions in all the modules explicit so that a network of ontologies is available
for user selection and as a base from which new ontologies are built. Existing
standards of RDF and a modular DAML+OIL are being used for development of
these foundational ontologies. OWL is considered limited in its expressivity
compared with first-order logic. Hence, a Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and
Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) has been developed as a module for this
foundational ontology and is expressed in first-order logic (Gangemi et al. 2002).
It follows the ‘perdurant–endurant’ top-level classification, along with two other

categories of ‘region’ and ‘quality’. A sub-classification of endurants into physical
and non-physical endurants is part of the categorization, where non-physical
endurants are defined by intentionality (along with beliefs and desires) and have
agentive or non-agentive properties depending on actions. DOLCE is the first
ontology that explicitly states cognitive bias, including linguistic bias and human
common sense, as a major consideration. It is constructed on Searle’s (1995) notion
of reality and is built at a ‘mesoscopic’ level (Smith 1995b) as a ‘descriptive
ontology’ to make meanings of already conceptualized entities clear, rather than a
‘prescriptive one’ where entities are conceptualized (Masolo et al. 2003a). No
research demonstrating the comparative applicability of these different ontologies to
geographic concepts currently exists.
It is clear from the discussion in the previous sections that there are a large
number of approaches and methods for ontology specification and development,
and a range of different interpretations of what ontology represents and what it can
help achieve. There is no systematic understanding of how these different
approaches link together or how the bottom-up and top-level approaches in
ontology design can be reconciled. Table 1 summarizes the discussion in this section
by organizing the major approaches and methods for ontology applied in the
GIScience domain within a schematic, hierarchical organization. The table is
organized according to the different types of ontologies, based on the ontology–
ontologies distinction discussed earlier in section 2, and scales down from the reality,
constituted by space and time, at the top of the table, to a list of specific ontologies
applicable in the geographic domain at the bottom. The primary components of
such ontologies are shown in this table along with the nature of specification.
4. Key considerations for a geographic ontology

The previous section, while providing an overview of the different ontologies and
methods for ontology development available in the geographic domain, also
demonstrated some of the problems associated with the development of ontologies
in the geographic domain at a general level. In particular, the lack of an integrated
framework for the multiple approaches, methods and ontologies developed in the
geographic domain was highlighted. In this section, a discussion is carried out to
highlight the significant issues associated with the use of ontologies in the
geographic context that arise primarily because of the specific needs of the
geographic domain. The geographic domain has specific issues regarding ontology
primarily because of its unstructured nature. A standard terminology is not
prevalent within the GIScience domain and is dependent on the context of use and
the user. The use of different terms and approaches (philosophical and operational)
causes confusion in the specification of universally accepted entities, concepts, rules,
relations, and semantics as the basis of a consensual ontology.
Smith and Mark (1998) provide a statement on the peculiarities of the geographic
domain. The major problems associated with defining a comprehensive founda-
tional ontology for GIScience lie in the inherent vagueness and ambiguity in the
definition of geographic descriptors, frames of reference and context, resulting from
linguistic and semantic ambiguities; and the resultant vagueness in geographic
reality and its conceptualizations. Geographic categorization and classification are
scale- and size-dependent, regionalization in space and time is human-dependent,
and location and structure of boundaries shape many geographical categories
518 P. Agarwal
Table 1. Schematic representation of ontological approaches, methods and developments in
GIScience.
REALITY—SPACE+TIME
Ontological Theory5Ontology+Semantics+Epistemology
Ontology ontology ontologies
Categories, Entities, Concepts, Relations, Axioms, Rules, Meanings
Theoretical/Abstract Formalized Theoretical/Informal Formalized
Top-level Domain-level
Generic Lower-level
Prescriptive Descriptive
Higher-order Normative
Reference Ontology Specific
Foundational Action-oriented/Task-oriented
Ontology
Purpose-driven
Elicited ontologies
Applications ontology
(light-weight ontology)
Philosophical realism/ Knowledge-Engineering/ Linguistics
Meta-physical Information systems
approach Semantics
Texts
Affordances
Image-Schematas
Human Conceptualizations
(elicited ontologies)
Folk Ontologies
Abstract First-Order logic Abstract Procedural Logic
Conceptualizations Procedural logic Abstract/Theoretical Functional
Conceptualizations languages
First-Order logic Functional Languages Theory for the domain Object-oriented
Primitives from
higher-order languages
Primary Theory
Tiered, tree-like or layered organisations
Taxonomies
Binary distinctions- Dual ontologies
Hierarchies
Networks of concepts
Universal Semantics (Meanings of Concepts Concepts, Objects, Actions, Tasks
and primitives)
Hierarchical organizations (Inheritance Relations
in sub-concepts)
Rich Axiomatization Rules
Predicates Context
Grounding
Topological and Mereological relationships Meanings and definitions
BFO SUMO Ontolingua
SNAP-SPAN (Smith)
Temporal Axioms DAML-S (OWL-S) OWL
(Allen)
Holes (Casati and DAML-T OIL
Varzi)
Table 1. (Continued.)
Layers (Donnelly WonderWeb (DOLCE) ATKIS

and Smith)
Tiered Ontology Wordnet
(Frank)
Linguistically Lilog
determined
Ontology (Frank)
Semantic Reference ANSI
System (Kuhn)
Topology and GeoInfo
Mereology (Smith,
Casati)
OpenGIS
GML
DAML-Map
(Smith and Mark 1998). Geographic objects are tied intrinsically to their spatial and
temporal context, inheriting properties and determining relationships from the
spatio-temporal framework in which they are referenced. This leads to problems in
determination of an ontology for the geographic domain, both at the abstract and
conceptual level. First, the ways that space and time determine relations and
property inheritance are not yet clear. Second, human dependence means that
geographic categories and nomenclature can have different meanings in different
application contexts. The boundaries in the geographic domain have been loosely
‘ontologised’ as fiat and bona fide boundaries (Smith and Varzi 2000, Smith and
Mark 2001), but further research is needed to assess the comprehensive inclusion of
all kinds of geographic boundaries within this categorization. The nature of
boundaries, the kind of regions that are created, and the spatial and temporal
properties and relations that result between objects located inside and outside such
regions are yet to be investigated and fully understood. The vagueness in the
geographic discipline, if systematically investigated, can lead to a better under-
standing of the dependence of commonly used geographic concepts on human
cognition. Examples include the research carried out by Agarwal (2004), Bennett
(2001c) and Worboys (2001) to investigate the meanings of concepts and relations
commonly employed in the geographic domain.
The top-level ontology and ontological languages developed in the KE
domain have to be assessed for their applicability to the categories and classes
(not only physical and natural categories, but also cognitive), in the geographic
domain. In summary, the main considerations in designing geographic ontologies
are to aim for:
1. inclusion of spatial and temporal concepts, categories, rules and relations;
2. resolution of issues of spatio-temporal integration and representational issues
arising from an object–field dichotomy;
3. resolution of vagueness and ambiguity in geographic information; and
4. resolution of issues in applying higher-order ontology to vague concepts.
For development of an integrated consensual ontology, it is important to resolve the
inherent vagueness encapsulated in geographic terms and concepts, causing conflicts
and mismatches. The issue of scale in geographic conceptualization and
representation requires further investigation for understanding variation in the
520 P. Agarwal
meaning of concepts at different scales and different levels of granularity.

In geographic data models, ontologies for the human conceptualization of space
and spatial relations are comparatively easier to define than the human
conceptualization and categorization of time and temporal relations. Appropriate
languages and tools have been developed to describe spatial concepts, but this is
still an active area of research for temporal relations. Temporal theories
in GIScience need to be defined more accurately, with formalization of the
categories and types of events, actions, processes, and temporal scales in a widely
acceptable, structured format. For an integrated spatio-temporal ontology, it is
important to identify spatial relations that are re-usable in the temporal context and
to examine the semantic inter-operability of such relations for spatial and temporal
descriptions.
There is a need to separate methods and research directions in adopting
philosophical ontology from those that define purely operational, pragmatic
ontologies. However, domain ontologies need to be linked to the top-level geo-
ontology and vice-versa for development of a common framework where lower-level
concepts map onto higher-order concepts.
Representation plays a major role when these ontologies are used to create a
commonly shared GIS. Cartographic and geometric approaches to geographic
ontology are also needed to make sure that representational and modelling
languages are compatible. As it is debatable whether or not the current object–field
representation dichotomy can represent all kinds of geographic phenomena,
ontologies have to encapsulate not only the meanings linked to specific concepts
but also the way these meanings are handled and represented in the cognitive set of
the individuals. Most ontologies, especially domain-specific and task-oriented
ontologies, have certain amounts of constraints and biases created by a
representational framework and internal metrics of the syntax. For reliable,
consensual ontologies, it is important to move away from top-level approaches to
bottom-up approaches where the representational frameworks do not limit the
nature of entities modelled from the real world (Smith 2002).
Although the use of ontology has not yet provided a focused research direction
for the GIScience domain, certain research issues can be summarized from the
discussion in the previous sections:
1. focus on semantics and inter-operability within database and data modelling
research;
2. methodological and systematic approaches to domain modelling;
3. inclusion of human conceptualization in the models and development of
methods and languages to define and formalize these conceptualizations in a
consensual framework;
4. determination of ways that an integrated methodology can be developed as a
generic approach to ontology development in the geographic context.
The lack of an adequate underlying theoretical paradigm means that GIScience fails
to qualify as a complete scientific discipline. In determining the rules, relations and
entities that can conceptualize all processes and phenomena within a minimum set of
mathematical equations, an ontology can also generate an underlying ‘theory for
everything’ in the geo-spatial domain. Resolving the basic entities and the rules of
engagement and axioms within the GIScience domain will enable researchers to
engage fully with the overall academic debate in ontology by identifying research
issues, directions and problems, and providing solutions. Besides providing the basis
for a consensual terminology, an ontological approach can also pave the way for
future research directions by questioning current approaches in the definition of
categorization and semantic content. A unified strategy and framework for
application of ontology within GIScience will need further and wider academic
discussion. Nevertheless, a proposed checklist of considerations is provided in
table 2 that offers the possibility of a common basis for ontology development in the
geographic discipline. This table is developed from a critical review of existing
approaches for ontology development in GIScience, and from an understanding of
the key factors that affect the specification of a meaningful ontology. Particular
emphasis is on explication of ontological commitments, defining links of modelled
entities to the real world, and reflections on the level of axiomatization needed for
the ontology. The aim of the checklist is to outline the significant aspects that will
allow the specification and explication of the technical and theoretical paradigm that
any ontology is set in, and ensure that attention is paid to all the critical stages of
ontology development, from specification of the domain to the role of the ontology,
and the links with existing ontologies.
Table 2. Schematic checklist of considerations in developing an ontology in the geographic

domain.
Framework:
i. What is the terminological framework and assumptions that the ontology is set in?
Domain and intended role of ontology:
i. What is the scale of ontology design and development? Is it top-level or domain-specific?
ii. Are the already-existing higher-order concepts and tools not exhaustive enough for
application? What are the limitations?
iii. Which paradigm (KE or meta-physical) is the ontology set in?
iv. What is the purpose of the ontology—descriptive or prescriptive?
v. If theoretical, what is the practical role of the ontology?
vi. If formalized, what is the end-application or purpose for developing this ontology?
vii. What is the extent of the domain? Is the application framework and context delimited?
Specification of the ontology and ontological commitments:
i. What are the universal categories in the domain?
ii. What are the primary concepts defining the categories?
iii. How are these concepts identified and defined? Where are the concepts extracted from?
iv. In what way are the concepts linked to real-world entities, objects and processes?
v. Are the semantics for the concepts explicit? Are there any common primitives that can
define the vague concepts?
vi. Are real-world objects and entities linked to these concepts crisp or vague? If vague,
what operational framework and assumptions are being used to define these?
vii. What is the level of axiomatization to be specified?
viii. Do these concepts include human conceptualizations? What is the role of space and
time, and what spatio-temporal paradigm and theoretical framework is the ontology
based in?
ix. How can the relations on the different entities be prescribed? Are these definitive or vague?
Validation for a good ontology:
i. Can the applicability and functionality of the resultant ontology be effectively
demonstrated? Can the inter-operability capacity of the ontology be demonstrated?
ii. Can the links to a top-level ontology or higher-order concepts be demonstrated for a
domain-specific ontology, and vice versa?
522 P. Agarwal
4.1 Geographic categories, concepts, and semantics

A consensual framework for meanings is a critical aspect in determining a shared
ontology. Semantic vagueness is a significant type of vagueness characterizing the
geographic domain (Bennett 2001a). Because semantic content is a crucial aspect in
the specification of a geographic ontology, it is important to consider ‘what is it that
has semantics’ (Uschold 2003: 26). According to the metaphysical classification and
psychological literature, categories include concepts, and concepts are the bearers of
meanings (Murphy 1991, Barsalou et al. 1993). Frege (1903) linked vagueness to
concepts. Concepts are semantically rich and referents for predicates (Bosch 1983),
such as an ‘old’ town, ‘big’ city, etc. Although ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ are used
interchangeably in most ontology literature, Sowa (2000) states that ‘categories’ are
universal in the real world, while ‘concepts’ are linked to semantics. The basic tenets
of cognitive semantics are also based in concepts (Gärdenfors 2000), where
meanings emerge out of human understanding and interpretation.
Arpirez et al. (2001: 21) define concept as ‘a description of a task, function, action,
strategy or reasoning process’. Concept is defined as ‘an abstract general conception,
a notion, an universal’ in the OED (2003), and as ‘an abstract or general idea
inferred or derived from specific instances’ in WordNet (WORDNET 1998).
Although criticized for its non-negotiable stance, Fodor’s (1998: 23) five
assumptions about concepts are relevant in this context. The significant aspects to
note from Fodor’s theory of concepts are that concepts are related to word
meanings, and referents allow the meanings of the concepts to be realized by linking
the concepts to the real world. Much of the discussion in geographic ontology is,
however, focused on identification of categories and prototypical instances (Mark et
al. 1999, 2001, Smith and Mark 1999, 2001). The notion of concepts is proposed to
be important in constructing a semantic reference system (Kuhn and Raubal 2003)
for geographic information, and methods relying on conceptual mapping are
proposed for resolving semantic heterogeneity (Kokla and Kavouras 2002).
However, the focus in such methods is on categories (Kuhn 2002) rather than on
concepts, and variability in semantic content along with the ill-defined nature of
geographic concepts is not considered as an issue for reliable mapping across the
different information sources. It is, therefore, important to establish the criteria for
qualifying a concept with a view to understanding the specific nature of geographic
concepts and the semantic content associated with them.
4.2 Ontology and space–time

Space and time provide the basis for geographic information (Smith and Mark
1998). In the SNAP–SPAN ontology (Grenon and Smith 2004), space and time are
included as entities in the framework of ‘geo-regions’, and the geo-regions follow a
tripartite classification of ‘space regions’, ‘time regions’, and ‘space–time regions’. The
spatial and space–time regions within the SnapBFO and SpanBFO ontology are
partial, abstract entities, and the space–time regions are occupied by behaviours that
are projections of real-world processes. In DOLCE (Gangemi et al. 2002), space and
time are considered as individual qualities and correspond to a location in the spatial (or
geometric) or temporal region. Events such as the duration of World War II and the
start of the Olympics are categorized as ‘temporal qualities’, while durations such as one
second and time intervals are categorized as ‘temporal regions’. DAML-space (now
known as OWL-S) and Time-DAML (Hobbs 2002) are attempts at building upper-
level ontologies in the geographic domain that include spatial and temporal concepts.
Some of the concepts included within DAML-S and DAML-T ontology, formulated as
first-order predicate calculus axioms, are topology, duration, granularity, shape, size,
dimension, orientation, and aggregates (Hobbs 2003). The DAML-time ontology (Pease
2002) is built as a set of first-order predicate calculus axioms. Formal specifications of
temporal concepts, such as Allen’s algebra of time (Drakengren and Jonsson 1997),
provide the foundation for the temporal ontology in correspondence with the concepts
that are available in SUMO. A sub-ontology is constructed in OWL (Feng and Hobbs
2003, McGuinness and vanHarmelen 2003) that enables users to handle most of the
temporal concepts in their domain. This is done by providing a vocabulary for
topological relations among primitives such as events, instants and intervals, along with
information about durations and calendar time (dates) and clock time. Vague terms
such as ‘recent’ and ‘short’, and deictic terms such as ‘now’ and ‘ago’ are still to be
included. Although these kinds of vague terms have been considered relatively
unimportant for the semantic web (Hobbs 2002), they will be crucial in modelling naı̈ve
notions of real-world geographic processes, and therefore, in its current state, the OWL
sub-ontology is not capable of modelling all kinds of geographic processes.
Although it has not been recognized as a problem in the software engineering
approach, modelling spatial and temporal entities and the relations between them at
different levels of granularity is a significant problem in the design of geographic
ontologies. With behavioural procedures and cognitive conceptualizations deter-
mining the categories and knowledge in the geographic domain, the task of defining
temporal knowledge is made even more complicated. Research carried out in
qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning (Cohn et al. 1995, Bennett and Galton
2001, Bittner 2002, Bittner and Stell 2002) suggests directions for adequate language
structures by defining semantics, concepts and relations involved in cognitive
processes. Spatio-temporal frameworks proposed by Allen (Allen and Hayes 1985),
Peuquet (1994), Hornsby and Egenhofer (2000) and Medak (2001) have contributed
by suggesting frameworks for incorporating qualitative aspects of time and space
that are difficult to handle in more definitive and traditionally employed object-
oriented frameworks. These efforts are yet to be integrated in the development and
specification of geographic ontologies. In addition, the development of ontological
frameworks that can model processes is a research issue that demands attention in
order to develop adequately rigorous geographic ontologies.
5. Summary and discussion

The discussion in the paper has demonstrated that, for ontology, a standard
terminology is not prevalent within the GIScience domain and is dependent on the
context of use and the user. The essential binary distinction is between the singular
and plural form of the term that is also sometimes equated with upper-case ontology
and a lower-case, respectively. This is the distinction between a philosophical over-
riding truth, seen as a branch of philosophy, and that for an operational ontology to
define primitives for a specific application domain and arising from the AI
traditions. Use of different terms and approaches, philosophical and operational,
causes confusion in understanding sub-categories within an ontology, be it entities,
concepts, rules, relations, or semantics. The need for ontology has to be clearly
understood and defined, and the terminological framework has to be made explicit
to allow for active participation and impact within the wider research community in
GIScience. The applications of ontology within GIScience have been made at
524 P. Agarwal
different scales in the real world, ranging from absolute higher-order concepts to
action-oriented ontology. Relevant terms and related concepts have been presented
in table 1. This allows the scale of application most suitable for a particular context
to become apparent. This framework is supplemented with the methods and
approaches that can be applied at each level of operation and the ontologies that
already exist. Its flexibility allows it to be updated as more research is carried out in
this direction. Finally, it can provide directions for a unified framework of
ontological considerations in GIScience.
As researchers in the geographic domain actively search for a comprehensive
ontology, many ontological initiatives that are happening outside the direct realm of
GIScience gain relevance and can provide a useful direction and framework for
development of geo-ontologies. Space and time have become significant along with
emphasis on consideration of the cognitive primitives. This has implications on the
flexibility needed within the meta-ontologies to support such concepts. It is, hence,
important for the GIScience community to have active representation in these
research communities and initiatives for building standardized languages to make
sure that the specific nature of the geographic concepts is incorporated and
represented.
It is evident from the discussion in the previous sections that the specific nature of
geographic categories and the predominantly cognitive nature of geographic
information make it difficult to organize the domain and the concepts in it within
a structured formal framework. The specific nature of the geographic domain is
characterized by indeterminacy, both semantic and conceptual, and by the
inherently spatial, topological and mereological properties of the entities and
objects constituting the geographic concepts. Specific issues underlying geographic
information, primarily vagueness, indicate the need to revisit and re-evaluate
existing methods and approaches handed down through philosophy or information
science traditions, and adapt them suitably to the specific requirements of the
geographic domain. Vagueness, especially semantic vagueness, is a critical obstacle
in the development of a comprehensive geo-ontology. Ontology is distinguished
from a terminological hierarchy by the semantic content explicated in the ontology.
Semantics are a key to distinguishing categories from concepts, and the semantic
heterogeneity in the geographic concepts leads to conflicts and problems in
achieving seamless inter-operability. It is, therefore, impossible to specify a top-level
ontology for the geo-spatial domain until the meanings of concepts and the
boundaries between different concepts are made clear. A catalogue of shared
meanings as a knowledge base can be created from a systematic and scientific
investigation into the different viewpoints for the meanings of concepts. Ontological
theory for concepts can be generated by grounding meanings through mapping and
aligning ontological commitments in different knowledge domains. Meanings and
definitions of terms and the underlying relations within most sub-domains in
geography are much more flexible, modifiable, and open to interpretation as
compared with many other scientific disciplines.
As the GIScience community is still attempting to define most common notions or
concepts more clearly, the over-riding ontology can only be constructed at a very
high level of abstraction. This problem is also associated with the different
backgrounds and disciplinary baggage that researchers within GIScience bring with
them into this inter-disciplinary environment. Consequently, the result is the varying
use for the same terminology and different conceptualizations for the same
real-world phenomenon. Consideration of human conceptualization of reality and

different ontological commitments along with the specific nature of the theoretical
position may lead to many different frameworks that can manifest themselves in the
form of different constructs. It is debatable whether a single ontology is able to
incorporate all these different standpoints on the geographic reality. Some key
questions are prescribed, as a checklist of issues that require careful consideration
while developing an ontology, in table 2.
For development of a common research agenda for ontological considerations in
GIScience, an important step will be to identify the geographic terms and concepts
that require better definition and to formalize the inherent vagueness encapsulated
in these. Another issue that needs proper investigation is the issue of scale in
geographic conceptualization, modelling, representation, development, and
application of theories for meaning of concepts at different scales and different
levels of granularity. Time is essentially linked with most geographic phenomenon,
and ontologies in various other domains essentially deal with static entities and
concepts, where meanings do not change over time. In geographic data models,
ontology for human conceptualization of space and spatial relations are
comparatively easier to define than the human conceptualization and categorization
for time and temporal relations. Appropriate languages and tools have been
developed to describe spatial concepts, but this is still an active area of research for
temporal relations. Research in qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning is
providing the GIScience domain with indications of languages that can
describe spatial and temporal concepts and relations defined within cognitive
conceptualizations of the geographical domain. Nevertheless, better integration is
needed to ensure that the questions being asked are relevant to the geographical
primitives.
Although most ontologies have been formalized using natural language or logic,
graphical, visual representations of such ontologies and the way that visual
representation can capture the ontology in the domain are still not very well
understood. If ontology has to form a sound basis for a GI system, then graphical
methods of ontology descriptions have to suggest a move from the standard object–
field paradigm and address the limitations it imposes on capturing reality. This will
bring the added complexity of symbol ontology and the meanings encapsulated in
different representation methods and techniques along with the ontology that has to
be represented.
6. Concluding remarks
In this paper many of the key ontological efforts in GIScience and in the wider
academic community have been critically reviewed, and some of the terminological
ambiguities that stem from the philosophical and operational traditions in the study
of ontology have been clarified. The notion of ontology and its use in the geographic
domain has been de-mystified by discussing the different approaches and methods
used for ontology development generally and, more specifically, in the geo-spatial
domain. Underlying all applications of ontology are two primary traditions: the
philosophical approach and the knowledge-engineering approach. Emerging from
these distinct lines of thought, two primary approaches to ontology application in
the geographic domain are identified: a comprehensive top-level ontology involving
an over-riding theory of everything, and an ontology where task and application-
specific models are specified. The limitations in current approaches and the key
526 P. Agarwal
issues in developing a comprehensive geo-ontology were discussed. No consensual

shareable ontology for the geospatial domain yet exists. There is an increasing
awareness in the GIScience community that geographic concepts and categories
have inherent indeterminacy and vagueness, especially that emerging from human
reasoning and conceptualization. The naı̈ve aspects of geographic information, its
significance in modelling the domain and in developing more reliable information
systems and representational frameworks, remain topical issues in geographic
research.
Ontology is not just another name for a conceptual model. It is a systematic study
of what a conceptual or formalized model should encapsulate to represent reality.
A complete ontology cannot be created until the ambiguity within specific
geographical concepts and terms is clarified. If the semantic ambiguity in
geographical concepts is systematically and scientifically assessed, we can get
somewhere closer to forming a catalogue of shared concepts grounded in shared
understanding and meaning. What might also be helpful at this stage is to identify
and list the concepts within the geographical domain that need investigation for
semantic clarity, and hence define a common research agenda. Practical applications
for all ontological methods or ontologies need to be done in different areas of
application to assess their applicability and re-usability. Once a complete
comprehensive ontology for the geographic domain is ready, interfacing the
ontology with the current systems or building new systems to handle the universal
categories will be another challenge.
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Prof. Peter Fisher and the three anonymous reviewers for
their constructive feedback that helped improve the quality of the paper. I also
wish to thank Prof. Mike Goodchild and Prof. Roy Haines-Young for their
comments on the initial drafts of the paper. All mistakes are, however, solely mine.
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International Journal of Geographical Information

ISSN: 1365-8816 (Print) 1362-3087 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tgis20

Ontological considerations in GIScience

P. Agarwal Corresponding author

To cite this article: P. Agarwal Corresponding author (2005) Ontological considerations in

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13658810500032321

Published online: 20 Feb 2007.

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Ontological considerations in GIScience

(Received 18 January 2004; in final form 19 August 2004 )

Ontology is a significant research theme in GIScience. While some researchers

Keywords: Ontology; Geographic; Semantics; Concepts; Inter-operability

Inter-operability is a key concern in GIScience for the sharing of geographic

*Corresponding author. Email: pragya@comp.leeds.ac.uk

Geographic ontologies are receiving increasing interest and are growing in

critical examination of the three distinct approaches to ontology development and

Woodruff 1995) on formal ontology is important, providing two-layered distinc-

2.1 Ontology and ontologies

resolving common semantic frameworks, but a complete understanding and a

2.2 Types of ontologies

2.3 Components of an ontology

context, topology and mereology are significant relations because of the

3. Ontology applications in GIScience

3.1 Ontology and Epistemology

3.2 Ontological theory and ontological commitments

system, and the ontology is used as a computationally tractable specification to develop

3.3 Approaches and methods in the geographic context

structure for a top-level ontology as an alternative approach. The tiers comprise

grounding ontologies in ‘affordances’ (Kuhn 1996) and in ‘image-schemata’ (Mark

Topographic Cartographic Information System’ (ATKIS) which is an initiative,

It follows the ‘perdurant–endurant’ top-level classification, along with two other

4. Key considerations for a geographic ontology

Layers (Donnelly WonderWeb (DOLCE) ATKIS

meaning of concepts at different scales and different levels of granularity.

Table 2. Schematic checklist of considerations in developing an ontology in the geographic

4.1 Geographic categories, concepts, and semantics

4.2 Ontology and space–time

5. Summary and discussion

real-world phenomenon. Consideration of human conceptualization of reality and

issues in developing a comprehensive geo-ontology were discussed. No consensual

Geographic Information Science, Proceedings of International Conference COSIT’03,

OED, 2003, On-line Oxford English Dictionary. http://dictionary.oed.com/ (accessed

VISSER, U. and STUCKENSCHMIDT, H., 2002, Interoperability in GIS—enabling technologies.

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