Glossary of terms

Here the working group is developing a glossary of the terms that we find useful to help us communicate. This glossary is very much a work in progress, and is not a deliverable of the working group.

It is not intended to be definitive, and will admit multiple, even contradictory definitions where ever they arise. While ontologies, for which terminology must be agreed, are indeed important deliverables of this working group, this is not the motivating driver for this glossary. Although this glossary may become a useful source of reference for those ontologies as we develop them, the primary purpose of this glossary is to support communication within the working group where speakers may reference some of the term definitions here to clarify intended meaning.

Therefore, working group members are encouraged to submit terms to this glossary by editing the wiki appropriately, and identifying themselves as the proponent of some definition. Please try to maintain alphabetic ordering. Alternative definitions for the same terms may be submitted in the same way by other members (as a separate line in the table). Where there is a minor variation or agreed improvements, working group members are encouraged to merge definitions where agreed by named proponents. Wherever some existing definition is supported by other working group members, such supporters are encouraged to identify themselves as such (with full liberty to change their mind as the glossary develops).

Where appropriate, proponents are encouraged to identify the source of the term (such as a particular standard) as this is useful to explain the definition and also, in the longer term, for ontology development. Feel free to add long explanatory notes or arguments to support your definition below the table (better still if you can, do it as a footnote, but that is not working for me!).

I have made a start by mindlessly borrowing from the Points Of Interest Working Group's POI Glossary.

--Kerry Taylor (talk) 11:55, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Related

ISO/TC 211 Multi-Lingual Glossary of Terms

This Glossary has been compiled from definitions found in International Standards developed by ISO/TC 211 - Geographic Information. It is a convenient and freely available summary for many of the concepts defined in ISO 19100 series standards. The repository for the ISO/TC 211 Glossary of Terms is an MS Excel workbook. The English language version of the Glossary occupies the workbook’s second spreadsheet.

Note that several of the ISO 19100 series are also published as parts of the OGC Abstract Specification.

OGC Reference Model

This document http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/orm defines the overall reference model used by OGC, and defines a lot of terminology.

The Glossary

Term	Definition	Source	Proponent	Supporter
Altitude	distance of a point from a chosen reference surface along a line perpendicular to that surface (e.g., height above mean sea level) [ISO 19116 and ISO 6709]	POI	Kerry
Augmented Reality (AR)	The real-time, context-based addition of digital information objects that overlay--enriching the user's perception of--the physical world and/or any object in the physical world permitting, in my many cases, additional interaction with objects.	POI	Kerry
Calendar	A temporal reference system that relates events and clock times to the movement of astronomical bodies. Usually involves units Year, Month and Day.	Time	Chris
Centroid	In geometry, the centroid, geometric center, or barycenter of a plane figure or two-dimensional shape X is the intersection of all straight lines that divide X into two parts of equal moment about the line. Informally, it is the "average" (arithmetic mean) of all points of X. The definition extends to any object X in n-dimensional space: its centroid is the intersection of all hyperplanes that divide X into two parts of equal moment. In the GIS community, a centroid is typically used in reference to a polygon.	POI	Kerry
Coordinate	one of a sequence of n numbers designating the position of a point in n-dimensional space [ISO 19111]	POI	Kerry
Coordinate System	set of mathematical rules for specifying how coordinates are to be assigned to points	POI	Kerry
Coverage	feature that acts as a function to return values from its range for any direct position within its spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal domain	ISO 19123:2005	Simon
(gridded) Coverage	data that is expressed across a geotemporal grid. A given cell within a grid will have one or more properties. 2 dimensional images are an example of this since they comprise a simple grid of pixels, the value of which is represented for humans as a colour. Satellite based earth observation imagery, and observation and measurement data, are specific examples of coverages where the values in each cell in the grid may represent human visible colours but can also represent things like sea state, temperature, albedo, ice depth, barometric pressure etc.	working definition for SDW	CEO-LD via Kerry
Datum	parameter or set of parameters that define the position of the origin, the scale, and the orientation of a coordinate system [ISO 19111]	POI	Kerry
Domain feature	feature of a type defined within a particular application domain	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
ex-situ	referring to the study, maintenance or conservation of a specimen or population away from its natural surroundings. Compare with _in-situ_	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Feature	abstraction of real-world phenomena	ISO 19101:2002	Simon
Functional requirement	A kind of requirement that states what a deliverable should accomplish (its desired functionality). Functional requirements describe the capabilities of a deliverable. A functional requirement is falsifiable - it is possible to test if the requirement is met in the end result. Also it is possible to determine if a functional requirement is in scope for the Working Group, for instance by applying scope questions.		Frans
feature-type	class of features having common characteristics	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Gazetteer	directory of instances of a class or classes of features containing some information regarding position [ISO 19112] Synonyms: Place name ontology	POI	Kerry
Geocoding	translation of one form of location into another (such as an address to a point location). [ISO 19133 and OGC Open Location Services standard]	POI	Kerry
Geofence	A virtual perimeter for a real world geographic entity. Defined as the extent of an imaginary fence around a location or place, a geofence can have polygonal vector boundaries or be constrained by a radius around a centroid. (Another Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geofence )	POI	Kerry
Geolocation	The identification of the geographic location of an object.	POI	Kerry
Geoparsing	The process of assigning geographic identifiers (e.g., codes or geographic coordinates expressed as latitude-longitude) to textual words and phrases that occur in unstructured content, such as "twenty miles north east of Jalalabad". You can also geoparse location references from other forms of media, for example audio content in which a speaker mentions a place. NB see also Geotagging, (assigns geographic identifier to an entire resource rather than elements within a resource)	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoparsing	Rachel
Georectification	corrected for positional displacement with respect to the surface of the Earth	See term #982 in ISO Glossary http://www.isotc211.org/TC211_Multi-Lingual_Glossary-2015-02-13_Published.xls	Kerry
Georectification	For remote sensing imagery: aligning images to an Earth-based coordinate system and correcting for the oblique angle of view and surface slopes	my (weak) experience	Kerry
Geospatial	The combination of spatial software and analysis method with geographic data sets.	POI	Kerry
Geotagging	The process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, SMS messages, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, distance, accuracy data, and place names. It is commonly used for photographs, giving geotagged photographs. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging )	POI	Kerry
Location	identifiable geographic place [ISO 19112]. Explicitly identified by name or geocode	POI	Kerry
Measurement	set of operations having the object of determining the value of a quantity	ISO 19101-2:2008	Simon
Minimum Bounding Rectangle	Often abbreviated to MBR. In geographic terms the description of a notional rectangle that encloses a location in terms of the coordinates of the top left and bottom right of the rectangle.	POI	Kerry
Mixed Reality	(encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality) A mix of reality, augmented reality, augmented virtuality and virtual reality. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_reality )	POI	Kerry
Non-functional requirement	A kind of requirement that states how a deliverable should be. Non-functional requirements describe the qualities of a deliverable. It is not possible to test whether this kind of requirement is met (yes or no), but it is possible to maximize support for non-functional requirments. Examples: simplicity, backward compatibility, scalability, extensibility, performance.		Frans
Pattern Of Interest	Proposed alternate meaning of acronym POI. Generalization of Point Of Interest, tentatively defined as "a set of conditions with associated information". Could be a place, a rock, a car, a person.	POI	Kerry
Observation	act of measuring or otherwise determining the value of a property	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Observation procedure	method, algorithm or instrument, or system of these, which may be used in making an observation	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Observation protocol	combination of a sampling strategy and an observation procedure used in making an observation	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Observation result	estimate of the value of a property determined through a known observation procedure	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Place	An aggregate term that can be used to refer to a point, a location, a POI or a meaningful combination thereof.	POI	Kerry
Point	0-dimensional geometric primitive, representing a position. [ISO 19107]	POI	Kerry
Point Of Interest	1. Often abbreviated to POI. A specific point location that is of interest. Frequently used to refer to business locations and tourist or well know sites and locations (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_interest ) 2. A Point-of-Interest (POI) is the common expression for a place on maps, navigation systems or route planners. These places are considered to have an exceptional meaning for people - they embody a special interest regarding an activity on that place such as a restaurant, a hotel, a petrol station. 3. POI - The properties of a physical position (location) in the world that may correspond to the past, present, or future location of a person, event, or device. [IETF]	POI	Kerry
Polygon	planar surface defined by 1 exterior boundary and 0 or more interior boundaries [ISO 19107]	POI	Kerry
Position	data type that describes a point or geometry potentially occupied by an object or person [ISO 19133]	POI	Kerry
Profile	constrained subset of a more general model	Used commonly in OGC, where it is often described as a "constrained subset" but I can't find a real definition. I think the idea is that any instance of a profile is also an instance of its "parent"	Kerry (although Simon cox penned this one)
Profile	Subset language: one language is a subset (or "profile") of a second language if any document in the first language is also a valid document in the second language and has the same interpretation in the second language.... If one language is a subset of another, the latter superset is called an extended language	W3C Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One	Kerry
Profile	a geometric curve or line in 3D space with length but not width	I made it up	Kerry
property	facet or attribute of an object referenced by a name	ISO 19143:2010 (OGC Filter encoding specification	Simon
property-type	characteristic of a feature type	ISO 19109:2005	Simon
Physical object Identifier	a Physical object(or real world object) identifier or PID is an identifier used to name a physical object	POI	Kerry
Requirement	In this Working Group: an aspect that a deliverable should have for the deliverable to be succesful. Two kinds of requirements are distinguished: functional requirements and non-functional requirements.		Frans
Sampling feature	feature which is involved in making observations concerning a domain feature	ISO 19156:2011	Simon
Semantic Web	A group of technologies that allow computer interpretation of the semantics of information available on the World Wide Web. (Ref: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ )	POI	Kerry
Spatial thing	Something that can be drawn on a map, or something that can be given in reply to a 'where?' question. A spatial thing can have a spatial relation with another spatial thing. Synonyms: spatial resource, spatial feature, spatial entity. Examples: location, geometry, coverage		Frans
Spatial relation	A way in which two objects can spatially interact.		Frans
Temporal System	A very general way in which time can be specified, usually involving only events and their relation to each other.	Time	Chris
Temporal Reference System	A general way in which time can be specified and counted, usually involving notation, relations/operators, clocks and counts of the clock 'ticks'.	Time	Chris
Temporal Coordinate Reference System	A way in which time can be specified and measured, usually involving notation, relations/operators, instants, durations, UoM, Axis, Epoch.	Time	Chris
Voxel	literally 'volume element', by analogy with 'pixel'. An individual element of a 3D raster grid; that is a volume divided into an array of cuboids or tetrahedra, each element of which has uniform properties. More information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel		Rachel

References: <references /> -- As you can see I (Kerry) cannot make this work properly...