Theories of Geographic Concepts: Ontological Approaches to Semantic Integration

Written by experts in the field, this book addresses theoretical, formal, and pragmatic issues of geographic knowledge representation and integration based on an ontological approach. The first part sets the context by emphasizing the importance of philosophical, cognitive, and formal theories in preserving the semantics of geographic concepts during ontology development and integration. Part two exhausts major theoretical issues related to the subject and part three analyzes a number of formal tools. Part four introduces a general framework with the necessary processes and guidelines to ontology integration and applies it to a number of ontology integration cases.