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Glossary of terms
From Spatial Data on the Web Working Group
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)
Contents
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...
