Volunteered Geographic Information Management Supported by Fuzzy Ontologies and Level-Based Approximate Reasoning

The paper proposes level-based approximate reasoning on a fuzzy ontology as a modeling framework to support the management of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) affected by an observation deficiency generating both uncertainty and fuzziness. The paper recalls the inadequacy of classic ontologies to create VGI, the limitation of the use of fuzzy ontologies to model both fuzziness and uncertainty, and proposes level based reasoning to answer user queries on VGI supported by a fuzzy ontology. A case study example is discussed.