The availability of geographic and geospatial information and services, especially on the open Web has become abundant in the last several years with the proliferation of online maps, geo-coding services, geospatial Web services and geospatially enabled applications. The need for geospatial reasoning has significantly increased in many everyday applications including personal digital assistants, Web search applications, local aware mobile services, specialized systems for emergency response, medical triaging, intelligence analysis and more. Geospatial Semantics and the Semantic Web: Foundations, Algorithms, and Applications, an edited volume contributed by world class leaders in this field, provides recent research in the theme of geospatial semantics. This edited volume presents new information systems applications that have potential for high impact and commercialization. Also, special effort was made by the contributors to focus on geospatial ontology development, related standards, geospatial ontology alignment and integration, and algorithmic techniques for geospatial semantics. Case studies and examples will be provided throughout this book as well as possibilities for future research.
