Integrated representation of spatial topological and size relations for the semantic web

Representing topological information for the Semantic Web often involves qualitative defined natural language terms such as “In”. This can be the case when exact coordinates of spatial regions are not available or they are unreliable. Topological spatial relations are the most important aspect of spatial representation and reasoning. In addition to topology, often the exact size of regions is not known as well, but the relations between sizes (e.g., larger, equal) are known. In this work we propose and evaluate an integrated representation of topological relations (RCC-5 and RCC-8) and qualitative size relations using OWL object properties and axioms, combined with reasoning rules expressed using SWRL, embedded into the ontology. Different representations are implemented and evaluated. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.