Toward a Multi-Dimensional Ontology Model for Urban Planning

Abstract

In the recent past years, the major challenge facing scientists and researchers in the field of knowledge engineering is classifying and sharing geographic data with both computer and human. Ontology is one of the most important classification schemes that aim to make data machine-interpretable. In the literature, all ontology based models developed in the field of urban planning have some limits. First, they describe the nature of each parcel of the soil while ignoring other important components of urban planning such as services, infrastructure … Secondly, these ontologies are developed according to legislation and regulations of the zone studied so they can’t be used by some urban territories that have specific urban law such as Moroccan country. This paper presents a new multi-dimensional ontology model called LUP specifically developed to overcome this flaw. The main goal is to provide semantic land use descriptions according to four dimensions: zoning, services, infrastructure and easement and to define all LUP concepts within the Moroccan urban law. We illustrate the use of our proposed model with a case study by mapping a land use planning document within the area of Ainchock municipality of Casablanca city according to our model concepts.