Proceedings Article | 29 December 2008
KEYWORDS: Floods, Databases, Geographic information systems, Data modeling, Cognition, Geography, Standards development, Roads, Associative arrays, Earthquakes
Geo-ontology, a kind of domain ontology, is used to make the knowledge, information and data of concerned
geographical science in the abstract to form a series of single object or entity with common cognition. These single
object or entity can compose a specific system in some certain way and can be disposed on conception and given specific
definition at the same time. Ultimately, these above-mentioned worked results can be expressed in some manners of
formalization. The main aim of constructing geo-ontology is to get the knowledge of the domain of geography, and
provide the commonly approbatory vocabularies in the domain, as well as give the definite definition about these
geographical vocabularies and mutual relations between them in the mode of formalization at different hiberarchy.
Consequently, the modeling tool of conception model of describing geographic Information System at the hiberarchy of
semantic meaning and knowledge can be provided to solve the semantic conception of information exchange in
geographical space and make them possess the comparatively possible characters of accuracy, maturity and universality,
etc. In fact, some experiments have been made to validate geo-ontology. During the course of studying, Geo-ontology
oriented to flood can be described and constructed by making the method based on geo-spatial affairs to serve the
governmental departments at all levels to deal with flood. Thereinto, intelligent retrieve and service based on geoontology
of disaster are main functions known from the traditional manner by using keywords. For instance, the function
of dealing with disaster information based on geo-ontology can be provided when a supposed flood happened in a certain
city. The correlative officers can input some words, such as "city name, flood", which have been realized semantic label,
to get the information they needed when they browse different websites. The information, including basic geographical
information and flood distributing and change about flood with different scales and ranges in the city, can be distilled
intellectively and on its own initiative from the geo-ontology database. Besides, correlative statistical information can
also be provided to the governmental departments at all levels to help them to carry out timely measures of fighting back
disaster and rescue. Compared with the past manners, the efficiency of dealing with flood information has been improved
to some extent than ever because plenty of information irrespective and interferential to flood in different websites can
be sieved in advance based on the retrieve method oriented to Geo-ontology. In a word, it will take the pursuers long
time to study geo-ontology due to actual limited resource. But then, geo-ontology will be sure to further perfect
correspondingly especially in the field of Geographic Information System owing to its more and more factual
applications.
