GeoSPARQL

GeoSPARQL is a model for representing and querying geospatial linked data for the Semantic Web. It is standardized by the Open Geospatial Consortium as OGC GeoSPARQL.^[1] The definition of a small ontology based on well-understood OGC standards is intended to provide a standardized exchange basis for geospatial RDF data which can support both qualitative and quantitative spatial reasoning and querying with the SPARQL database query language.^[2]

The Ordnance Survey Linked Data Platform uses OWL mappings for GeoSPARQL equivalent properties in its vocabulary.^[3][4] The LinkedGeoData data set is a work of the Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (AKSW) research group at the University of Leipzig,^[5] a group mostly known for DBpedia, that uses the GeoSPARQL vocabulary to represent OpenStreetMap data.

In particular, GeoSPARQL provides for:

• a small topological ontology in RDFS/OWL for representation using
  • Geography Markup Language (GML) and well-known text representation of geometry (WKT) literals, and
  • Simple Features, RCC8, and DE-9IM (a.k.a. Clementini, Egenhofer) topological relationship vocabularies and ontologies for qualitative reasoning, and
• a SPARQL query interface using
  • a set of topological SPARQL extension functions for quantitative reasoning, and
  • a set of Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Core inference rules for query transformation and interpretation.