Spatial Knowledge Representation on the Semantic Web

Abstract

The Region Connection Calculus based on 8 relations (RCC8) is one of several extensively researched methods to use for qualitative spatial representation and reasoning. We discuss several issues arising when representing RCC8 in OWL DL, a decidable fragment of OWL. There is no direct encoding of such a calculus in OWL DL, as the language lacks required features such as role reflexivity, role Boolean operators, and role inclusion axioms. Some of these features are to be included in the new version of the OWL standard, OWL 2, but this language still lacks the expressive power to support role negations, conjunctions, disjunctions, and complex role inclusion axioms. Recently, advances in description logics languages as SROIQBs have made possible expressing some of the above constructs, while maintaining the decidability of the language. In this paper, we exploit these new opportunities by providing qualitative spatial knowledge representation on the Semantic Web.

An Investigation into OWL for Concrete Syntax Specification Using UML Notations

“…OWL has been extensively studied for both spatial representation and reasoning using RCC-8 [2,12,20,30]. Realizing complete RCC-8 spatial reasoning in OWL is not straightforward due to some inherent limitations of OWL [12,13,20].…”

“…Realizing complete RCC-8 spatial reasoning in OWL is not straightforward due to some inherent limitations of OWL [12,13,20]. An example of such a limitation is the lack of support for complex role inclusion axioms required to encode the entries of the composition table of RCC-8 [12].…”

Supporting Mobile Robot’s Tasks through Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

“…While some theoretical foundations for translating RCC-8 to OWL exist (see (Grütter and Scharrenbach, 2009;Katz and Grau, 2005;Hogenboom et al, 2010a)) as well as some implementations that include RCC-8 in a DL reasoner (see (Stocker and Sirin, 2009)), we would like to use both RCC-8 and CDC (for topology and orientation) in a most enclosed fashion. Thus, this paper provides an approach for integrating OWL, RCC-8, and CDC.…”

“…However, the combination and enhancement of ontological reasoning with qualitative spatial reasoning is a difficult task. Recent publications show that the combination of these two reasoning and representation methods is coupled with losing the ability to reason about spatial knowledge and revealing inconsistencies or to forfeit the decidability of ontological reasoning (Katz and Grau, 2005;Hogenboom et al, 2010a;Hogenboom et al, 2010b).…”

Topological properties in ontology-based applications

“…Another issue is that OWL 2 does not support all the role inclusion axioms used in the composition tables needed for the RCC reasoning. According to [14], RCC-8 also requires role negation, conjunction, and disjunction, as well as complex role inclusion axioms. Using SROIQB s logic [15], which adds role boolean operators to SROIQ, some of these needs can be covered.…”