Research On Ontology Driven Web Thematic Mapping Service Model

Nowadays, there is a transformation and development from traditional cartography and digital cartography into informational cartography. Informational cartography, which is based on traditional cartography and digital cartography, concentrating on geographical information service based cartographic data acquisition, processing and service integration, but also an improvement to the traditional cartography and digital cartography. In this transformation and development, there still exist several problems to be solved, such as the acquisition and integration of heterogeneous cartographic data, the establishment and utilization of web cartographic service in heterogeneous environment, and the automated processing and expressing of user oriented cartographic data.To solve problems discussed above, the research is going to be started from the perspective of web thematic cartography. By introducing thematic cartography ontology, the formalization and integration of web thematic cartographic data is going to be researched, together with the formalization and establishment of thematic cartography service and the automated processing and expressing of thematic cartography data. Through which, new theory and technology could be provided to support the informational cartography.The main research contents of this research could be summarized as follows:Firstly, fundamental theories of traditional cartography and digital cartography is analyzed comprehensively, a discussion about the research situation of thematic cartography is undertaken from the aspects of thematic map contents and characteristics, thematic data, thematic symbol theories and web thematic cartography. Ontology is introduced into thematic cartography, the research trend of ontology is investigated and the meaning of thematic cartography ontology is discussed. Web thematic mapping theories and methods available are also analyzed, the idea of chaining web services to making thematic map is provided.Secondly, the characteristics and contents of thematic cartography ontology are analyzed, the method of thematic mapping process based thematic cartography ontology is provided. The establishment of thematic cartography ontology is discussed detailed by integration of thematic data ontology, thematic symbol ontology and thematic map ontology;After that, the situation of uquibitous network is introduced and the characteristic and technology of uquibitous network based web thematic mapping is discussed. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) based web map service and composition theory is detailed analyzed, and a web thematic mapping model applied to web thematic making is introduced, the web thematic cartography service type, parameters, the definition of thematic cartography services, the method of service composition are also presented.Then, in according to the thematic cartography ontology and web thematic mapping model, the ontology driven web thematic mapping service model presented. The general method of ontology driven geographical information system is introduced, which is utilized in the thematic cartography service. The ontology driven thematic cartography service model is defined from aspects of the web thematic cartographic rule,web thematic symbols and engine and web thematic mapping service.At last, an ontology driven web thematic mapping prototype system is built based on the research, government department oriented web mapping and public participating web mapping in Shenzhen Geoinformation Center are taken as the example to analyze the application and impact of this prototype.Ontology driven web thematic mapping service model is a theory framework and technological practice to the tendency of informational cartography development, which might contribute to problems solving involved the integration of heterogeneous thematic cartographic data, automated thematic cartographic data processing and expressing. This approach is only a preliminary theory framework, and a lot more work need be done in the future research.