Matthieu Viry

Web page: https://mthh.github.io/

Research engineer – 2022-

  • Project: GeoChange

PhD Student – 2018-2021

  • Subject: A declarative approach based on Semantic Web technologies to specify and generate adaptive geovisualisations
  • Keywords: Geovisualization, Semantic Web, Knowledge representation
  • Supervisors:
  • Funding: ANR CHOUCAS
  • Start: October 1st, 2018
  • Defense: December 16th, 2021
  • Abstract:Today, many models make use of Semantic Web technologies and describe a domain with a geospatial dimension possibly relying here on specific models to describe this spatial dimension at a high level, e.g. GeoSPARQL. In GI Science, besides knowledge modeling and representation, the main challenge remains that of the geovisual restitution of the information. Indeed, geospatial information and the interfaces for viewing and interacting with it, commonly referred to as geovisualisation applications, play an indispensable role in the understanding of various spatial phenomena and in the decision-making processes involving this information.

    This works explores how Semantic Web technologies can facilitate the specification and generation of adaptive geovisualisations. Indeed, classical approaches for creating geovisualisation from RDF data involve numerous transformations of the data, which can lead to the loss of the semantics encoded in the models. In addition, approaches allowing the direct geovisual exploitation of RDF data described by ontological models are rare and have significant drawbacks.

    In this thesis we present the CoViKoa framework. CoViKoa allows to describe, through a purely declarative specification document, how to create a geovisualisation for an RDF model and dataset. The geovisualisations that can be described with CoViKoa are rich and complex: various mechanisms of data transformations, filters and selections are proposed to the user, directly in RDF. It is also possible to describe several types of interactions between component data. We also validate our proposal with two case studies. The first one focuses on the processing of the search for a lost person in mountain environnements, and the second one deals with the spatio-temporal evolutions of statistical territorial entities.