Implementation of a Geo-Semantic App by Combining Mobile User Contexts with Geographic Ontologies

Abstract

This paper describes a GIS framework for geo-semantic information retrieval in mobile computing environments. We built geographic ontologies of POI (point of interest) and weather information for use in the combination of semantic, spatial, and temporal functions in a fully integrated database. We also implemented a geo-semantic app for Android-based smartphones that can extract more appropriate POIs in terms of user contexts and geographic ontologies and can visualize the POIs using Google Maps API (application programming interface). The feasibility tests showed our geo-semantic app can provide pertinent POI information according to mobile user contexts such as location, time, schedule, and weather. We can discover a baking CVS (convenience store) in the test of bakery search and can find out a drive-in theater for a not rainy day, which are good examples of the geo-semantic query using semantic, spatial, and temporal functions. As future work, we should need ontology-based inference systems and the LOD (linked open data) of various ontologies for more advanced sharing of geographic knowledge.