A Geospatial Semantic Web Visual Query Tool

As geospatial data are becoming more widely used through mobile devices and location sensitive applications, the potential value of linked open geospatial data in particular has grown, and a foundation is being developed for the Semantic Geospatial Web. Protocols such as GeoSPARQL and stSPARQL extend SPARQL in order to take advantage of spatial relationships inherent in geospatial data. This paper presents GeoQuery, a graphical geospatial query tool that is based on Semantic Web technologies. GeoQuery presents a map-based user interface to geospatial search functions and geospatial operators. Rather than using a proprietary geospatial database, GeoQuery enables queries against any GeoSPARQL endpoint by translating queries expressed via its graphical user interface into GeoSPARQL queries, allowing geographic information scientists and other Web users to query linked data without knowing GeoSPARQL syntax.