**5.2 Way forward**

This research work has highlighted the benefits of tools and techniques of the Semantic Web and especially underlying knowledge technologies and their usages with the spatial technologies for the efficient management of spatial information. It has also been discussed that the approach presented here benefits both the Semantic Web and spatial technology. The research activities has just initiated the integration of spatial technology into the Semantic Web framework and still has long way to go. This section presents few areas where the research work could be continued in this area.

Researches in the field of spatial technology within the Semantic Web framework have not moved beyond geospatial ontology and the possibility of semantic interoperability between

Spatialization of the Semantic Web 189

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different sources. This research attempts to break that trend and use knowledge to manage the spatial data through knowledge management techniques. In the process, it provided the mechanisms to infer spatial rules through spatial built-ins for SWRL. This was done first through populating domain ontology with the spatial components so that spatial knowledge could be enriched into it and this spatially rich knowledge base is inferred through SWRL. It could also be queried through SPARQL. However there are number of issues that need to be addressed in future work. The first one is about the dependability on the database systems to conduct the spatial operations and functions. This research uses the spatial operations and functions provided by PostGIS, the spatial extension of PostgreSQL to enrich the knowledge base through their result. Future works should make an attempt to free them with such dependency through providing such functionalities within spatial built-ins themselves.

Another area where the research could concentrate is the area of using current reasoning engines to reason the spatial knowledge base and deduce the implicit spatial knowledge. In other words addition to the the inference engine to infer the rules through SWRL, the constraint axioms should be introduced within the ontology which automatize the enrichment of knowledge base through reasoning mechanism. The constraint axioms in particular should be able to include the spatial built-ins and run through the respective spatial operations and functions to automatize the enrichment process while reasoning the knowledge base. It can be clarified with one of the typical examples in industrial archaeology: "chimney should be 5 meters around an oven and should be round". Currently it is possible to execute this only through SWRL rule.

feat:Object(?x) ^ feat:Oven(?y) ^ spatialswrlb:Buffer(?y, 5, ?x) ^ att:hasShape(?x, round) feat:Chimney(?x) (3)

This infers the spatial knowledge base to annotate the result to the class feat:Chimney. However an alternative could be a theorem

$$\text{feat:} \text{Chimney} \subseteq \text{Within(Buffer(feat:\text{Open},\\$))} \quad \text{\(\pi\)} \text{has} \\ \text{Shape.(\text{round})} \tag{4}$$

can be thought upon. The existing reasoning engine then reasons every object with round shape around 5 meters of every oven and terms them as individuals of chimney.

Lastly, it is important to have standard terms for every built-in that will be developed to process spatial knowledge. With other built-ins in the tools standardized by W3C, the spatial built-ins should also get standardized by the consortium. In addition to W3C, OGC should also get involved in standardizing the built-ins. An effort in this direction should be carried out.
