On the Consistency of Spatial Semantic Integrity Constraints

Because of the increasing use of decentrally held data and networked services, detailed knowledge about the existing data (for example its origin, structure, formats, quality and reference applications) becomes more and more important. The availability of such metadata and the evaluation of the fitness for use based on these metadata are vital. This book intents to contribute to the development of meaningful and machine-interpretable quality descriptions of geographical information. It focuses on spatio- temporal semantic integrity constraints. Three major contributions are elaborated: (i) a detailed categorisation of semantic integrity constraints, (ii) a framework for the formal definition of the constraints and (iii) a reasoning methodology for the detection of conflicting and redundant constraints. Possible application areas are quality assurance of geodata, geodata integration and harmonisation, data modelling and ontology engineering, semantic similarity measurement and usability evaluation.Awarded with the Dissertation Price 2010 for excellent dissertations by the Association of Friends of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich (Freundeskreis der Universität der Bundeswehr München e.V.)