Semantic of measurement

Hi,

I would like to ask you if there is any work to define semantic for
measurement ? I am working the geospatial industry and I am working on the
definition of XML schemas for our field (Geographic Markup Language, Digital
Photogrammetry, coordinates transformation...).  In our field, especially
photogrammetry, it is extremely important to attached semantic to the
measurement.
For example a position in 3D space, can not be expressed only with 3
numbers. This number have an unit, an accuracy, a confidence, covariance
matrix,...and other attributes like the date of measurement, the mode of
measurement (GPS, meter,...)

If you think about it, everything is expressed as a measurement  (in
continuous or discrete space) in our world. An address is a measurement, a
name is a measurement. A colour is a measurement. It can be expressed as a
discrete set of values (blue, red, orange) or as wavelength in a continuous
space.
I think that if you want to bring the Web to its full potential, all the
information needs to have a semantic in order to make powerful processing on
the data. Imagine I am looking for ground control points for Paris (France)
with an accuracy of 1 m. If my information is tagged correctly using a
common framework measurement, I can have a search engine that can classify
this measurement into different categories. Right now, you have numerous
schemas using different way to represent measurement.
A common framework needs to be defined to represent measurement.
I think that W3C is the best place to perform this work. S.I Unit Commitee
can work as well on such  idea. An XSL schema could to be defined for this
purpose. I predict that you will see very soon semantic programming language
that will be based on the definition of this framework.

Your comments are very welcome.

Best regards


Stephane Fellah
Senior Software Developer
PCI Geomatics
50, West Wilmot Street
Richmond Hill, On
Canada L4B 1M5
Tel: 1 905 764 0614 Ext.290
Fax 905 764 0153

Visit our Web site : www.pcigeomatics.com