CFP: Terra Cognita 2008 Workshop on Geospatial Semantics

CALL FOR PAPERS—FIRST CALL
Terra Cognita 2008 Workshop
http://asio.bbn.com/terracognita2008/
In Conjunction with the 7th International Semantic Web Conference,
(ISWC 2008), http://iswc2008.semanticweb.org/, Karlsruhe, Germany


Workshop Overview
The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers in a growing 
field of Semantic Web research: the intersection between Semantic Web 
data and geospatial data and applications. This workshop follows the 
Terra Cognita 2006 Workshop at ISWC 2006. Increased interactions between 
the geospatial and Semantic Web communities are likely to contribute to 
solving some important spatial data problems within the Semantic Web and 
to providing indispensable formalizations for upper-level and domain 
ontologies.

Adding a geospatial component will enhance the Semantic Web. The 
Semantic Web community is in need of both better ways of representing 
and processing geospatial data and a better understanding of the unique 
problems geospatial data present. A large proportion of the data 
available on the Web has an inherent spatial context. This context 
currently goes largely unexploited. While many Semantic Web applications 
may use a map for viewing data, processing spatial relationships at a 
deeper level of understanding is needed to exploit the range of data.

The geospatial community requires input from the Semantic Web community 
as well, because a number of important spatial data problems have 
potential solutions within the Semantic Web. Building geospatial 
ontologies is a first step for alleviating the restrictiveness of 
XML-based and relational database-based schemas. Service 
interoperability also stands to make significant gains by incorporating 
Semantic Web technologies.

Input is needed from both the geospatial and Semantic Web communities. 
It is expected that this workshop will draw Semantic Web researchers 
interested in working in the geospatial area as well as geospatial 
researchers wanting to pursue Semantic Web technologies. The workshop 
will include research areas in addition to novel applications. The 
workshop is a full day and includes one interactive session in which 
audience members can talk or present a slide for a couple of minutes on 
a relevant topic. (Although the terms spatial and geospatial are 
sometimes used interchangeably, we include the term geospatial to cover 
more broadly issues and data having a spatial component.)


Paper Topics
• Geospatial ontologies
• Semantic Web research regarding geospatial data
• Novel applications of Semantic Web technology to spatial data
• Novel applications of spatial data to Semantic Web applications
• Techniques for processing spatial data within the Semantic Web
• Semantic issues in geospatial standards
• Domain-oriented GIS applications that leverage Semantic Web technology

Paper Submission
Submissions will be handled using the EasyChair system 
(http://easychair.cs.man.ac.uk/conferences/?conf=terracognita2008). 
Papers must be formatted in the style of the Springer Publications 
format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (Information for 
LNCS Authors, 
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0#anchor1) 
Formatted papers must be approximately 10 pages (no longer than 13) and 
must represent new work. All submissions will be reviewed by three 
members of the program committee. At least one author must register to 
present an accepted paper.

Dates
Submissions: 21 July
Acceptances: 5 September
Camera Ready: 26 September

Organizing Committee
Terra Cognita 2008 is organized by members of the Spatial Ontology 
Community of Practice (SOCoP, 
http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Spatial_Ontology_Community_of_Practice). 
SOCoP is a geospatial semantics interest group currently with members 
from U.S. federal agencies, academia, and companies. The group is open 
to anyone, and international collaborations are welcome. SOCoP’s goal is 
to foster collaboration among users, technologists, and researchers of 
spatial knowledge representations and reasoning towards the development 
of a set of core, common geospatial ontologies for use by all in the 
Semantic Web.

Workshop Chairs
Nancy Wiegand, University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA, wiegand at 
cs.wisc.edu
Dave Kolas, BBN Technologies, USA, dkolas at bbn.com
Gary Berg-Cross, Engineering Management & Integration, USA,

Program Committee Members
Dan Adams, Scitor Corp, USA
Harry Chen, ImageMatters, USA
Isabel Cruz, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Mike Dean, BBN Technologies, USA
Cathy Dolbear, Ordnance Survey, UK
Beth Driver, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, USA
Max Egenhofer, University of Maine, USA
Kathleen Hornsby, University of Iowa, USA
Werner Kuhn, University of Munster, Germany
Josh Lieberman, Traverse Technologies, USA
Jim Ressler, Northrop Grumman, USA
Angela Schwering, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Received on Friday, 30 May 2008 14:18:09 UTC