Ontology Driven Analysis of Spatio-temporal Phenomena, Aimed At Spatial Planning And Environmental Forecasting

Abstract. Spatial planning is a crucial area for balancing civilization development with environmental protection. Spatial planning has a multidisciplinary nature. It must take into account the dynamics of the processes, which could affect the integrity of the environmental system. That is why we need a new approach to modelling phenomena occurring in space. Such approach is offered by ontologies, based on Description Logic (DL) and related to inference systems. Ontology is a system for the knowledge representation, including conceptual scheme and based on this scheme representation of reality. Ontologies can be enriched with additional logical systems. The authors present a way of building domain ontologies for spatial planning, including the representation of spatio-temporal phenomena. Description Logic is supplemented by structures of temporal logic. As a result, the analysis for exploring the topological relations between spatial objects will be extended to include temporal relationships: coincidence, precedence and succession, cause and effect relationship. Spatio-temporal models with temporal logic structures, encoded in ontologies, could be a subject of inference process, performed by semantic reasoners (reasoner engines). Spatio-temporal representations are offered, by so-called upper ontologies, such as GFO, BFO, OCHRE and others. Temporal structures provided in such ontologies, are useful for the analysis of data obtained from environmental and development monitoring systems and for description and representation of historical phenomena. They allow creating the models and scenarios of expected spatial transformation. They will support analysis for spatial development design, decision-making in spatial planning and forecasting of environmental impact.