Intelligent Interoperability in the Geospatial Web
A special issue of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 16
Special Issue Editors
Interests: spatial data infrastructures; knowledge management; semantic web
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Semantics is increasingly emerging as the keystone to interoperability. On one hand, providing scientific information in the form of assets that are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) suggests the need to use Semantic Web standards for resource description. On the other hand, Semantic Web standards are key enablers for establishing a data economy in Europe via Data Spaces, harnessing JSON-LD to demystify semantic technologies. Furthermore, quintessential semantics—ontologies—evolved from top-down domain descriptions into bottom-up Knowledge Graphs overlaid on graph databases. Such coupling is meant to foster more explainable AI (in and of itself the hardest interoperability effort).
The geospatial domain has often yielded seminal examples of interoperability-oriented initiatives, its many heterogeneities calling for more fine-grained descriptions. These range from national/transnational efforts such as INSPIRE (EU), NSDI (USA), CGDI (Canada), ASDI (Australia) to global ones, such as the GEO System of Systems, scaling to millions of datasets across the world. It is, therefore, natural to look to the geospatial domain for advancements in semantics that can then be repurposed for other contexts. This Special Issue will collect recent advancements in both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of semantics in the geospatial domain.
The suggested themes comprise, but are not limited to, the following:
- Semantics-based resource annotation, retrieval, and visualization;
- Semantic lift of resource descriptions;
- Linked geospatial data;
- Geospatial ontologies and geospatial ontology alignment;
- Semantics in wireless sensor networks;
- Application of AI and large language models within semantic spatial data infrastructures;
- AI-assisted geospatial data semantic annotation.
The expected article types comprise both original research articles and reviews of the existing literature on the proposed subjects.
Dr. Cristiano Fugazza
Dr. Paolo Tagliolato
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- spatial data infrastructures
- semantics
- interoperability
- domain description
- intelligent workflows
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