Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being. Ontology is currently used by philosophers, information scientists and psychologists. A sharing ontology is required for communicating between the communicating participants. And the formal description of ontology is fundamental to data exchange standards. In recent years, ontology has been used by geographers. Many researchers have recognized the importance of geographic categories, and the relationships and interactions between geographic categories. Geographic objects are intrinsically tied to space and exist at some time. In the geographic realm, cognitive categories expose certain special features of geographic objects at surveyable scale. And that these features denote the specific ontological characteristics of geographical objects. At the same time, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of time, and time has been an integral part of geographical information science. Thus, the research of geographic ontology must involve a fully spatio- temporal view of our world, in other words, it is about spatial temporal geographic ontology. In this paper, firstly, it reviews the recently research of geographic ontology of many experts. And it mainly explores that what is the geographic ontology and what are the research contents of geographic ontology, and how to construct an geographic ontology? The domain of geographic ontology contains objects, relations, boundaries, events, processes, qualities, and quantities of all sorts. Geographic objects are typically complex, and they will in every case have parts. An adequate ontology of geographic objects must therefore contain a theory of part and whole, or mereology. And that an adequate ontology of geographic objects must contain also a topology, a theory of boundaries and interiors, of connectedness and separation, that is integrated with a mereological theory of parts and wholes. Secondly, the paper investigates the three levels of reality: the spatial reality, the cognitive reality and geographic reality. Then it considers that geographic cognition is the key factor of geographic category. Geographic categories are related to natural, cultural, and fiat element, et al. Thirdly, in this section, the research is about an spatial temporal geographic ontology that contains space and time. The paper discusses the spatial classification and the temporal categories of geographic phenomena. Spatial objects based on object or field, which are continuants or discrete, must be represented suitably by geographic ontology. Temporal analogue of objects: there are events and processes of various kinds. Processes and events are the key elements that describe dynamic action of spatial temporal geographic objects. With the introduction of time, the requirement to take heed of the manifold interconnections between the spatial and the temporal must be proposed. The geographic phenomena can be represented as spatial or temporal, and as continuants or discrete, and as events or processes. These categories are not exist in isolation from one another. Spatial and temporal are restricted each other and represent the dynamic geographical phenomena all together. Lastly, the paper concludes that spatial temporal geographic ontology must take heed of the manifold interconnections between the spatial and the temporal and in the future a technical infrastructure be needed to provide a basis for GIS.
['Zhaoqiang Huang', 'Wenling Xuan', 'Xiuwan Chen']
Spatial temporal geographic ontology