e-Science Institute Public Lecture Announcement

10 March 2009, 11:23am

The e-Science Institute is delighted to host a public lecture by Dr Femke Reitsma. The public lecture is again open to all interested parties in academia and industry. There is no need to register for this event and those attending the lecture are invited to join us for tea and coffee at 17:00.

Speaker:

Dr Femke Reitsma
Geography Department
Canterbury University, UK

Topic: "Adding Semantics to Geographic Data Models"

Date and Time: 16:00, 7 April 2009
Place:
Newhaven Lecture Theatre
e-Science Institute
15 South College Street
Edinburgh

Note that there is no need to register for this event - just turn up.

This lecture will be available via web cast.

Abstract:

Meaning in geographic data sets can be found in three places: in the data set as a whole (as described by metadata), in the relationships among features in the data set (spatial or other), or in those features themselves. Most work on expressing geospatial semantics has focussed on the first two, this presentation is about the semantics to be found in individual features in a spatial data set.

Our traditional geospatial data models that allow us to represent individual features involve associating some measurable quality, such as temperature, or observable feature, such as a tree, with a point or region in space and time. When capturing data we implicitly subscribe to some kind of conceptualisation. If we can make this explicit in an ontology and associate it with the captured data, we can leverage formal semantics to reason with the concepts represented in our spatial data sets. This talk will present work on expressing semantics at the data model level and using these for discovering geospatial information, with a practical implementation as proof of concept.

For further information, contact:
Miss Jennifer Hurst
Senior Secretary & PA to the Director of NeSC
15 South College Street
Edinburgh, EH8 9AA
+44 (0)131 651 4043

e-Science Institute Public Lecture Announcement

GeoConnexion UK