[DL] CFP: COSIT workshop on Spatial and Geographic Ontologies

[Pierre Grenon]

                      WORKSHOP ON
FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES IN SPATIAL AND GEOGRAPHIC ONTOLOGIES

                  Tuesday 23rd September 2003

To be held in conjunction with:
     COSIT'03
     Conference on Spatial Information Theory
     24-28 September,  Ittingen, Switzerland
     http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~cosit03/home.html

There is currently  much interest in the development  of Ontologies to
support  a  wide variety  of  tasks  including  knowledge reuse,  data
integration,  knowledge acquisition,  knowledge  management, web-based
services and many other information applications.

The  spatial  and  geographic   domains  involve  a  rich  and  highly
interdependent conceptual structure.  Some kind of ontology specifying
the  meanings  and  logical  connections  between  these  concepts  is
essential to supporting: a) applications which can access this data in
a  flexible  way;  and  b)  sharing  of  spatial  information  between
applications.   However,  spatial   and  geographic  concepts  present
particularly acute problems for ontology construction.  They stand in
highly complex  relationships to  underlying physical reality  and are
often  associated with  deep ontological  issues such  as  problems of
vagueness and identity through time.

The workshop  will focus  on those aspects  of spatial  and geographic
information where the nature of the domain has a fundamental impact on
ontology construction.   It will provide  a forum for  presentation of
new work in the following and related areas:

  * key problems and issues in the construction of spatial and geographic
    ontologies, including:
     -  foundational ontology of spatial properties and relations,
     -  vague and ambiguous spatial and geographic concepts,
     -  the relationship between geographic and physical concepts,
     -  modelling spatial granularity,
     -  events and spatio-temporal processes,
     -  identity of spatial/geographic objects through time,
     -  aggregate objects

  * examination of strengths and weaknesses of state-of-the-art spatial
    and geographic ontologies.

  * appropriate methodologies for constructing and evaluating ontologies
    in the spatial domain.

  * mechanisms for integration and inter-operation among different
    spatial/geographic ontologies.

We invite interested parties to submit either position papers (1-2 pages)
or full research papers (up to 12 pages) on any topic related to the
above areas.

Papers should be submitted by email in PDF format to
   Brandon Bennett <brandon at comp.leeds.ac.uk>
    AND
   Pierre Grenon  <pierre.grenon at ifomis.uni-leipzig.de>

The submission deadline is 1/8/03
Authors will be notified of acceptance on 15/8/03

A registration fee will be charged to cover the cost of room hire.
This will be kept as low as possible.
Further details of the workshop will be posted on the web site at:
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/brandon/cosit03ontology.html

Please distribute this call for participation to anyone
you think might be interested.


Best Regards,
Brandon Bennett and Pierre Grenon
-- 
Pierre Grenon
IFOMIS Uni Leipzig
Haertelstr. 16-18
04107 Leipzig
http://people.ifomis.uni-leipzig.de/pierre.grenon/
pgrenon at ifomis.uni-leipzig.de
phone: 49(0)351971672
fax: 49(0)3519716179