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Knowledge Representation, Spatial

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of GIS

  • 203 Accesses

Synonyms

GeoOntologies; XML Triple

Definition

The formal definition of knowledge can be elusive. We tend to recognize knowledge when we encounter it, but have greater difficulties in defining it.

Knowledge can be distinguished from data and information (Ackoff 1989). Data are raw observations made through sensory or instrumental measurements. Spatial data typically consists of records of where something is located in space. Information is a summarized description of the data. In this transformation, the volume of the data decreases, but its density (value per unit) increases. Spatial information might be a mathematical representation of how an attribute varies over geographic space.

Knowledge is the next step in this chain – it includes a contextfor the ingested information. Knowledge implies that some background information is present, along with some means to build upon that information. Spatial knowledge is the understanding of where and why people or objects are located relative...

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References

  • Ackoff RL (1989) From data to wisdom. J Appl Syst Anal 16:3–9

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  • Casati R, Smith B, Varzi AC (1998) Ontological tools for geographic representation. In: Guarino N (ed) Formal ontology in information systems. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 77–85

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  • Smith B (1995) Formal ontology, common sense and cognitive science. Int J Hum-Comput Stud 43:641–667

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  • W3C OWL ontology language reference. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref

Recommended Reading

  • Raskin RG, Pan MJ (2005) Knowledge representation in the semantic web for earth and environmental terminology (SWEET). Comput Geosci 31:1119–1125

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboraty, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Robert Raskin

Authors
  1. Robert Raskin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Shashi Shekhar

  2. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA

    Hui Xiong

  3. Department of Management Sciences, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Xun Zhou

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Raskin, R. (2017). Knowledge Representation, Spatial. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H., Zhou, X. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17885-1_671

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