An ontology-based approach for the semantic modelling and reasoning on trajectories

In this paper we present a methodology for the semantic enrichment of trajectories. The objective of this process is to provide a semantic interpretation of a trajectory in term of behaviour. This has been achieved by enhancing raw trajectories with semantic information about moves and stops and by exploiting some domain knowledge encoded in an ontology. Furthermore, the reasoning mechanisms provided by the OWL ontology formalism have been exploited to accomplish a further semantic enrichment step that puts together the different levels of knowledge of the domain. A final example application shows the added power of the enrichment process in characterizing people behaviour.