Abstract
Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to geospatial data that is collected and/or shared voluntarily over the Internet. Its use, however, presents many limitations, such as data quality, difficulty in use and recovery. One alternative to improve its use is to use semantic enrichment, which is a process to assign semantic resources to metadata and data. This study proposes a VGI semantic enrichment method using linked data and thesaurus. The method has two stages, one automatic and one manual. The automatic stage links VGI contributions to places that are of interest to users. In the manual stage, a thesaurus in the hydric domain was built based on terms found in VGI. Finally, a process is proposed, which returns semantically similar VGI contributions based on queries made by users. To verify the viability of the proposed method, contributions from the VGI system Gota D’Água, related to water waste prevention, were used.
Highlights
IntroductionThe rapid growth in the amount of data available resulted in the need to include more semantics in websites, leading to the creation of the semantic web
The development of the web has led to more widespread and visible content
In order to exemplify how the semantics present in the thesaurus built from Volunteered geographic information (VGI) contributions may be used, this study proposes a process that returns semantically similar VGI contributions based on a query provided by a user
Summary
The rapid growth in the amount of data available resulted in the need to include more semantics in websites, leading to the creation of the semantic web. In order to enable the implementation of the semantic web, new technologies have been developed (e.g., linked data) and existing technologies were incorporated (e.g., thesauri, ontologies, semantic bases). The addition of semantics and the incorporation of technologies allowed the evolution of search and research mechanisms on the web, which innovates the way data are discovered, accessed, integrated, and used [1]. With the help of such technologies, user participation on the Internet has become more active and enabled content creation besides the adaptation and development of applications for varied fields. One of the fields that benefit from greater user participation on the internet is geographic information
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
