Investigating a Bottom-up Approach for Extracting Ontologies from Urban Databases

Ontologies, as “formal and explicit specifications of shared conceptualizations” [1] play a predominant role when developing information systems. This role is increasingly recognised by geo and urban experts when dealing with urban (geo) spatial information systems (GIS, SIS) and spatial databases (SDB). Generally speaking, they provide significant benefits for the design and use of geographic information, such as defining semantics independently of data representation [2]. Urban GIS and SDB are therefore a large source of urban “domain” ontologies [3],