Ontology Based Spatial Data Modeling

Regarded as an efficient tool for managing spatial data, GIS (Geographic Information System) is more and more becoming a main application platform for spatial data management. Recently, with the increase of the demand for GIS application, GIS has been developing rapidly. At the same time, GIS is faced with the difficulty of efficient management and comprehensive application for the spatial information in different forms or from different resources.The share of spatial information need reach not only the level of data sharing but also the semantic level of sharing data. It is to say that to solve the problem of operating the data different in forms and having semantic differences. The key to the problem is to operate on the unknown data rather than the known data. Among the unknown data we meet the problems of finding out which are relative, relative data's storage information, and how to access them to the semantic level. In order to get rid of the problems, ontology has been introduced for its ability to describe the concept at the semantic level.In this paper I design an application model basing on spatial data ontology, trying to realize semantic query and search of spatial data in the geographic information application system by the model as well as the spatial data ontology. I design and realize the spatial data ontology "ChinaRegion". I so some research on how to use this model and the ontology to realize semantic query and search. The main ingredients of my paper are as follows:1. I describe the current situation and problems facing the data sharing and data interoperating in the fields of geographic information system, then I introduce the concept of ontology.2. I describe the definition and classification of ontology as well as the languages of describing ontology.3. I design a model of spatial data ontology application. I discuss how to build spatial data ontology, how to use some software (protege) to describe the ontology in a specific language (OWL DL). I reason and use the querylanguage named Jess query the ontology in the protege. By doing this I explain a kind of tempt to reach the semantic level data sharing and interoperating.4. I express the expectation of the wider and deeper level of the research.