Temporal logic and operation relations based knowledge representation for land cover change web services

Providing land cover spatio-temporal information and geo-computing through web service is a new challenge for supporting global change research, earth system simulation and many other societal benefit areas. This requires an integrated knowledge representation and web implementation of static land cover and change information, as well as the related operations for geo-computing. The temporal logic relations among land cover snapshots and increments were examined with a matrix-based three-step analysis. Twelve temporal logic relations were identified and five basic spatial operations were formalized with set operators, which were all used to develop algorithms for deriving implicit change information. A knowledge representation for land cover change information was then developed based on these temporal logic and operation relations. A prototype web-service system was further implemented based on OWL-DL. Both online access and conversion of land cover spatio-temporal information can be facilitated with such a web service system.