**1.3 Spatial components in semantic web**

The Semantic Web technologies is slowly gaining acceptance in the wider community. It is thus paramount to include every type of information within the technology. The core within Semantic Web technologies is the semantics of the resources. These semantics may be the spatial or non-spatial. However, the focus of the technology is mainly on utilizing the nonspatial semantics for managing the information. Thus, the spatial information is widely neglected. Nevertheless, it has been realized inclusion of spatial components within Semantic Web framework is important for way forward. Those researches mainly focus on semantic interoperability of spatial data for efficient exchange of spatial data over heterogeneous platforms or efficient data integration. In cases like (Cruz, et. al 2004; Cruz, 2004), the ontologies are used to map their concepts to a global concept within a global ontology and thus providing a common platform for data integration. This is a common trend of practice for managing heterogeneous data source through Semantic Web technologies. The same practice is applied for geospatial data sources. In other cases like (Tanasescu, et al., 2006), ontologies are used to manage the semantics within different data sources to maintain the semantic interoperability of spatial data within different platforms.

In the realm of geospatial and temporal concepts and relationships, the work has not yet reached a level of either consensus or actionability which would allow it to be basis of knowledge interoperability (Lieberman, 2007). The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is playing a major role to develop a consensus among different stakeholder on various aspects of geospatial technologies. The data interoperability is a major area in which OGC is concerned upon and it has developed different standards for this. Groups like Geospatial Incubator have taken the works of OGC to formulate steps in updating the W3C Geo vocabulary and preparing the groundwork to develop comprehensive geospatial ontology. In the process it has reported different spatial ontologies that exist in the Web (Lieberman et al., 2007).

It is evident that the geospatial ontologies are developed to solve individual spatial problem and are not being used to be effective for knowledge formulation within the Semantic Web framework. Existing ontologies or the ontologies in the process of creation are mostly targeting the usage of vocabularies for the proper data management and not the knowledge management. One implication of such approach is that there is no possibility of geospatial 154 Semantics – Advances in Theories and Mathematical Models

Summarizing, it could be said that ontology defines the data structure of a knowledge base and this knowledge base could be inferred through various inference engines. These inference engines can be perform under Horn logic through Horn-like rules languages.

Semantic Web technology is slowly revolutionizing the application of knowledge technologies. Knowledge technologies though existed before the Semantic Web, the implementation in their fullness is just being realized. This research benefits from the existing inference engines through the inference rules and reasoning engines to reason the knowledge. However in current stage, the research works moves beyond semantic reasoning and semantic rule processing and attempts to integrate the spatial reasoning and spatial rule inference integrating spatial components in its structure. This research project introduces the approach on achieving the spatial functionalities within those inference

The Semantic Web technologies is slowly gaining acceptance in the wider community. It is thus paramount to include every type of information within the technology. The core within Semantic Web technologies is the semantics of the resources. These semantics may be the spatial or non-spatial. However, the focus of the technology is mainly on utilizing the nonspatial semantics for managing the information. Thus, the spatial information is widely neglected. Nevertheless, it has been realized inclusion of spatial components within Semantic Web framework is important for way forward. Those researches mainly focus on semantic interoperability of spatial data for efficient exchange of spatial data over heterogeneous platforms or efficient data integration. In cases like (Cruz, et. al 2004; Cruz, 2004), the ontologies are used to map their concepts to a global concept within a global ontology and thus providing a common platform for data integration. This is a common trend of practice for managing heterogeneous data source through Semantic Web technologies. The same practice is applied for geospatial data sources. In other cases like (Tanasescu, et al., 2006), ontologies are used to manage the semantics within different data sources to maintain the semantic interoperability of spatial data within different platforms. In the realm of geospatial and temporal concepts and relationships, the work has not yet reached a level of either consensus or actionability which would allow it to be basis of knowledge interoperability (Lieberman, 2007). The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is playing a major role to develop a consensus among different stakeholder on various aspects of geospatial technologies. The data interoperability is a major area in which OGC is concerned upon and it has developed different standards for this. Groups like Geospatial Incubator have taken the works of OGC to formulate steps in updating the W3C Geo vocabulary and preparing the groundwork to develop comprehensive geospatial ontology. In the process it has reported different spatial ontologies that exist in the Web (Lieberman et

It is evident that the geospatial ontologies are developed to solve individual spatial problem and are not being used to be effective for knowledge formulation within the Semantic Web framework. Existing ontologies or the ontologies in the process of creation are mostly targeting the usage of vocabularies for the proper data management and not the knowledge management. One implication of such approach is that there is no possibility of geospatial

engines.

al., 2007).

**1.3 Spatial components in semantic web**

reasoning to enhance the knowledge base. It is widely noticed there is the lack of a known, robust geospatial reasoners. Furthermore, it has been argued that while geospatial reasoning is an ever-evolving field of research, spatial data constructs are not yet accommodated within most current Semantic Web languages as the OWL language (Reitsma & Hiramatsu, 2006).

The seamless integration of spatial components within Semantic Web technologies is the major topic of this research project. Hence, the approach in which this component is integrated within the global framework of the Semantic Web technology is covered extensively within this research project. Additionally, it discusses different components involved in spatial activities within the framework.
