GML and the semantic web - help needed please.

I am a newcomer to XML and its associated languages and therefore am hoping I could be given a few tips and ideas concerning a dissertation I am considering in order to complete my masters in geographical information science.

The dissertation aims to investigate whether Geography Markup Language (GML) can learn from semantic web technology. This will involve looking at the properties of RDF/S, DAML+OIL, OWL and anything else that maybe involved, and also the limitations of GML for storing semantics. My initial ideas for such a project would be to take a very small sample data set and recode it from GML into those standards above. Having done so I plan on querying each in a similar manner to highlight the benefits and pitfalls of each. Is this realistic? Further to this I would like to take specific properties from each language and combine them. Is this possible, for example can you mix and match GML with DAML+OIL?

Up until now I am self taught and I do not have a computer science background at all therefore any help would be greatly recieved.

Thanks
Sam