Approaches to Uncertainty in Spatial Data

Approaches to Uncertainty in Spatial Data

 

This text outlined many facets of uncertainty and I found it to be very informative.  There seemed to be an abundant amount of information spread over a very short period, I suppose this speaks to the depth of uncertainty inherent to spatial data.  What I enjoyed most about this read was its connection to my research topic—ontologies and semantics.

 

One of the key sources of uncertainty is how an object is defined, this is often a subjective matter and may be very hard to quantify.  The focused of ontologies in general is to define the vocabulary in such a way that it is explicitly understood by both humans and computers.  Prior to reading this chapter, had you asked me will a well constructed ontology help combat data uncertainty I would be quick to respond absolutely, yes.  However, my position has changed.  Of course enough people should agree upon a well-constructed ontology that the subjectivity is no longer problematic, but when dealing with a domain ontology—like geospatial—the community that gives the “ok” is in agreement with certain things, say they have a similar epistemology.  The purpose of ontologies is to facilitate interoperability between domains and world-wide data exchange, so these domain specific definitions may not translate well into other areas of research.  For example, using a land-use ontology to find data and then translate this into a study of land-cover or visa versa may be problematic and cause a significant level of uncertainty.  This leaves me questioning where adjustments are too be made?  On one hand, there could be full disclosure on problems with uncertainty and anything contentious may be addressed in the near ‘final product’.  Or we adjust fundamentals, like ontologies, to attempt to account for such uncertainty (but this may inhibit an ontologies effectiveness at doing its job)? So David, maybe your seminar will clear this up for me, but how on earth do we begin to address uncertainty in all its forms?!

 

-BannerGrey

 

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