Geographic Data Modelling and Metadata Analysis

Monica De Martino

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche(IMATI)- Genova (IT)

The presentation aims to shortly illustrate the research activity performed at IMATI in the field of Geographic Information. The research on geographic information can be spitted in two tasks: geographic data modelling and geographic metadata analysis.
In the first part of the presentation a short brainstorming concerning the activity performed on geographic data analysis and modelling is illustrated. Then the presentation will mainly focus on metadata analysis activity.
Metadata analysis activity has been partially carried on in the project INVISIP: "Information Visualisation in the Site Planning Process" supported by the European Commission, within the Information Society Technology (IST) program (IST-2000-29640) whose objective was to create a framework to facilitate information retrieval based on an existing metadata information system (MIS). The activity aims to define an approach based on visualization and ontology techniques to analyse large repository of geographic metadata to support the search for expressive geographic resources. The approach is characterized by a visual reasoning to facilitate the navigation in an unfamiliar space of geographic metadata and a semantic reasoning to support the seeker in the definition of the search criteria. Then techniques and concepts of information visualization, graphic interaction and ontology are analysed and exploited: the main principle of the approach is to integrate some of these techniques and concepts to facilitate data searching activity.