Communal Ontology for Navigation Support in Urban Region

Revision with unchanged content. Due to the growing popularity of mobile information technology, more people, especially in the general public, have access to computerized geospatial informaion systems for wayfinding tasks or urban navigation. One of the problems with the current services is that, whether the users are exploring, or navigating, whether they are travelrs who are totally new to a region or long-term residents who have a fair amount of regional knowledge, the same methods is applied and the direction are given in the same way. However, spatial knowledge for a given urban region expands in proportion to residency. Urban navigation is highly dependent on cognitive mental images, which is developed through spatial experience and social communi­cation. Thus, the wayfinding service for a regional community can be highly supported, using well-known regional places. This book is to develop the framework for urban navigation wihtin a regioal community. The concept of communcal ontology is proposed to aid in urban navigation. The experi­mental work was implemented with case study to collect regional landmarks, develop the ontological model and represent it with formal structure. The final product of this study will provide the geographical information of a region to the other agent and be the fundamental information structure for cognitive urban regional navigation.