The concept of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has recently emerged from the new Web 2.0 technologies. The OpenStreetMap project is currently the most significant example of a system based on VGI. It aims at producing free vector geographic databases using contributions from Internet users. Spatial data quality becomes a key consideration in this context of freely downloadable geographic databases. This article studies the quality of French OpenStreetMap data. It extends the work of Haklay to France, provides a larger set of spatial data quality element assessments (i.e. geometric, attribute, semantic and temporal accuracy, logical consistency, completeness, lineage, and usage), and uses different methods of quality control. The outcome of the study raises questions such as the heterogeneity of processes, scales of production, and the compliance to standardized and accepted specifications. In order to improve data quality, a balance has to be struck between the contributors' freedom and their respect of specifications. The development of appropriate solutions to provide this balance is an important research issue in the domain of user-generated content.

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Quality Assessment of the French OpenStreetMap Dataset

What is here called controlled natural language CNL has traditionally been given many different names. Especially during the last four decades, a wide variety of such languages have been designed. They are applied to improve communication among humans, to improve translation, or to provide natural and intuitive representations for formal notations. Despite the apparent differences, it seems sensible to put all these languages under the same umbrella. To bring order to the variety of languages, a general classification scheme is presented here. A comprehensive survey of existing English-based CNLs is given, listing and describing 100 languages from 1930 until today. Classification of these languages reveals that they form a single scattered cloud filling the conceptual space between natural languages such as English on the one end and formal languages such as propositional logic on the other. The goal of this article is to provide a common terminology and a common model for CNL, to contribute to the understanding of their general nature, to provide a starting point for researchers interested in the area, and to help developers to make design decisions.

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A survey and classification of controlled natural languages

Citizens are increasingly becoming an important source of geographic information, sometimes entering domains that had until recently been the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies. This activity has a very diverse character as it can, amongst other things, be active or passive, involve spatial or aspatial data and the data provided can be variable in terms of key attributes such as format, description and quality. Unsurprisingly, therefore, there are a variety of terms used to describe data arising from citizens. In this article, the expressions used to describe citizen sensing of geographic information are reviewed and their use over time explored, prior to categorizing them and highlighting key issues in the current state of the subject. The latter involved a review of ~100 Internet sites with particular focus on their thematic topic, the nature of the data and issues such as incentives for contributors. This review suggests that most sites involve active rather than passive contribution, with citizens typically motivated by the desire to aid a worthy cause, often receiving little training. As such, this article provides a snapshot of the role of citizens in crowdsourcing geographic information and a guide to the current status of this rapidly emerging and evolving subject.

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Crowdsourcing, citizen science or volunteered geographic information? The current state of crowdsourced geographic information

The Geospatial Web: How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society (Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing)

This document surveys current techniques, tools and applications for mapping between Relational Databases (RDB) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Basic knowledge of RDF as well as RDB

http://cci.case.edu/cci/images/0/04/RDB2RDF_SurveyReport.pdf

A Survey of Current Approaches for Mapping of Relational Databases to RDF

The Geosciences and Geography are not just yet another application area for semantic technologies. The vast heterogeneity of the involved disciplines ranging from the natural sciences to the social sciences introduces new challenges in terms of interoperability. Moreover, the inherent spatial and temporal information components also require distinct semantic approaches. For these reasons, geospatial semantics, geo-ontologies, and semantic interoperability have been active research areas over the last 20 years. The geospatial semantics community has been among the early adopters of the Semantic Web, contributing methods, ontologies, use cases, and datasets. Today, geographic information is a crucial part of many central hubs on the Linked Data Web. In this editorial, we outline the research field of geospatial semantics, highlight major research directions and trends, and glance at future challenges. We hope that this text will be valuable for geoscientists interested in semantics research as well as knowledge engineers interested in spatiotemporal data.

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Geospatial semantics and linked spatiotemporal data --Past, present, and future

Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency of Great Britain, is investigating how semantic web technologies assist its role as a geographical information provider. A major part of this work involves the development of prototype products and datasets in RDF. This article discusses the production of an example dataset for the administrative geography of Great Britain, demonstrating the advantages of explicitly encoding topological relations between geographic entities over traditional spatial queries. We also outline how these data can be linked to other datasets on the web of linked data and some of the challenges that this raises.

Geographical Linked Data: The Administrative Geography of Great Britain on the Semantic Web

At OWLED2007 a task force was formed to work towards a common Controlled Natural Language Syntax for OWL 1.1. In this paper members of the task force compare three controlled natural languages (CNLs) — Attempto Controlled English (ACE), Ordnance Survey Rabbit (Rabbit), and Sydney OWL Syntax (SOS) — that have been designed to express the logical content of OWL 1.1 ontologies. The common goal of these three languages is to make OWL ontologies accessible to people with no training in formal logics. We briefly introduce these three CNLs and discuss a number of requirements to an OWL-compatible CNL that have emerged from the present work. We then summarise the similarities and differences of the three CNLs and make some preliminary recommendations to an OWL-compatible CNL.

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A comparison of three controlled natural languages for OWL 1.1

The mathematical nature of description logics has meant that domain experts find them hard to understand. This forms a significant impediment to the creation and adoption of ontologies. This paper describes Rabbit, a Controlled Natural Language that can be translated into OWL with the aim of achieving both comprehension by domain experts and computational preciseness. We see Rabbit as complementary to OWL, extending its reach to those who need to author and understand domain ontologies but for whom descriptions logics are difficult to comprehend even when expressed in more user-friendly forms such as the Manchester Syntax. The paper outlines the main grammatical aspects of Rabbit, which can be broadly classified into declarations, concept descriptions and definitions, and elements to support interoperability between ontologies. The paper also describes the human subject testing that has been performed to date and indicates the changes currently being made to the language following this testing. Further modifications have been based on practical experience of the application of Rabbit for the development of operational ontologies in the domain of topography.

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Rabbit: developing a control natural language for authoring ontologies

This demonstration presents ROO, a tool that facilitates domain experts' definition of ontologies in OWL by allowing them to author the ontology in a controlled natural language called Rabbit. ROO guides users through the ontology construction process by following a methodology geared towards domain experts' involvement in ontology authoring, and exploiting intelligent user interfaces techniques. An experimental study with ROO was conducted to examine the usability and usefulness of the tool, and the quality of the resultant ontologies. The findings of the study will be presented in a full paper at the ISWC08 research track [2].

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Glen Hart

Papers

Geospatial semantics and linked spatiotemporal data --Past, present, and future

Geographical Linked Data: The Administrative Geography of Great Britain on the Semantic Web

A comparison of three controlled natural languages for OWL 1.1

Rabbit: developing a control natural language for authoring ontologies

ROO: involving domain experts in authoring OWL ontologies