A Land Use Planning Ontology: LBCS

2012

Urban planning has a considerable impact on the economic performance of cities and on the quality of life of their populations. Efficiency at this level has been hampered by the lack of integrated tools to adequately describe urban space in order to formulate appropriate design solutions. This paper describes an ontology called LBCS-OWL2 specifically developed to overcome this flaw, based on the Land Based Classification Standards (LBCS), a comprehensive and detailed land use standard to describe the different dimensions of urban space. The goal is to provide semantic and computer-readable land use descriptions of geo-referenced spatial data. This will help to make programming strategies available to those involved in the urban development process. There are several advantages to transferring a land use standard to an OWL2 land use ontology: it is modular, it can be shared and reused, it can be extended and data consistency maintained, and it is ready for integration, thereby supporting the interoperability of different urban planning applications. This standard is used as a basic structure for the "City Information Modelling" (CIM) model developed within a larger research project called City Induction, which aims to develop a tool for urban planning and design.

Springer: Computational Science and Its Applications, 2011

This paper describes the “Land Based Classification Standards” (LBCS) OWL2 ontology used as a basic structure for the “City Information Modelling” (CIM) model developed within a larger research project aimed at developing a tool for urban planning and design. The main purpose is to provide semantic and computer-readable land use descriptions of geo-referenced spatial data, to make available programming strategies and design options to the participants of the urban development process. There are several advantages of transferring a Land use standard into a OWL2 land use ontology: it is modular, it can be shared and reused, it can be extended and data consistency can be checked, it is ready to be integrated, supporting the interoperability of different urban planning applications.

Journal of Geographic Information System

In the recent past years, the major challenge facing scientists and researchers in the field of knowledge engineering is classifying and sharing geographic data with both computer and human. Ontology is one of the most important classification schemes that aim to make data machine-interpretable. In the literature, all ontology based models developed in the field of urban planning have some limits. First, they describe the nature of each parcel of the soil while ignoring other important components of urban planning such as services, infrastructure … Secondly, these ontologies are developed according to legislation and regulations of the zone studied so they can't be used by some urban territories that have specific urban law such as Moroccan country. This paper presents a new multi-dimensional ontology model called LUP specifically developed to overcome this flaw. The main goal is to provide semantic land use descriptions according to four dimensions: zoning, services, infrastructure and easement and to define all LUP concepts within the Moroccan urban law. We illustrate the use of our proposed model with a case study by mapping a land use planning document within the area of Ainchock municipality of Casablanca city according to our model concepts.

2012

We present 4 City Semantics, a software tool for city planning driven by semantic web ontologies. With this tool the participants of the urban development process may identify an urban intervention site and respective surrounding area and semantically annotate them with knowledge about the use of the land and the type and size of its population, following a customizable workflow. The key principle behind the tool lies in the use of semantic web ontologies for the representation of land use systems, planning process workflow and ...

OWL-LED proceedings of OWL: Experiences and Directions Workshop 2012. Vol. 849. Published by CEUR-WS.org. Heraklion, Crete, Greece., 2012

We present a software tool for urban planing, driven by se- mantic web ontologies. With this tool, the participants of the urban development process can semantically annotate an intervention site with knowledge about the use of the land. The tool provides the user as much flexibility as possible in the choice of the land use standard that will be used to perform the classifications. This flexibility is achieved by defining extensible ontologies in which the concrete standards can be built upon. This allows our tool to load external ontologies that define the taxon- omy of the standard and the semantic relations between the land use categories. The loaded ontologies seamlessly integrate in the application, and are used through a friendly user interface. We also demonstrate how ontologies can be used to perform automatic categorizations and con- sistency checks in the geographical knowledge, aiding in the process of identifying the land uses of a site.

Computation: The New Realm of Architectural Design, 2009

The ultimate goal of the project in which the described research evolves is a computer-platform for assisting in the development of urban design proposals at the site planning scale including formulation, generation, and evaluation modules. The paper is concerned with the development of a common ontology that guarantees inter-operability among the three modules. After clarifying the theoretical framework, it describes the methodology used to develop the proposed Urban Design Ontology (UDO), as well as its lexicon, syntax, and semantics. It is argued that such ontology constitutes the bases for a City Information Model (CIM) that permits to elaborate consistent and comprehensive descriptions of urban spaces, thereby enabling the formulation of programs for urban interventions and the generation of corresponding design proposals. Cite: Montenegro, N., & Duarte, J. P. (2009). Computational Ontology of Urban Design. In B. Colakoglu, & G. Cagdas (Ed.), Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe - eCAADe 2009, (pp. 253-260). Istanbul, Turkey.

2008

This study is concerned with the formulation of solutions for urban problems. It departs from Alexander’s pattern language theory and urban design guidelines, to create a system for generating specifications or the ingredients of a plan, given a scale, a site and a community. It takes into account strategies, regulations, guidelines, physical features of the site, and furthermore, the social, cultural and economic characteristics of the population. This system, sorted by a sequence of events, through stages, categories, methods and agents, describes taxonomic levels and their inner relations. Such an ontology provides a pattern encoding structure towards a computational model within the capabilities provided by the spatial data modeling of GIS (GIS-O). The urban formulation model is conceived to increase qualitative inputs, reducing ambiguities, through a flexible while automate process applied to urban planning.

Journal of Information Technology …, 2010

2008

The paper presents the ongoing research work on a software system for supporting the exploration of the numerous and often interrelated factors that can affect the urban design. The present implementation of the system supports the simulation of different urban scenarios in relation to the uniqueness and constraints peculiar to a design and a site. The paper considers our ongoing research work to formally represent the implicit and explicit knowledge used by means of ontologies. The ontology semantic system administrates a set of rules and relations among urban entities. To this aim, we are dealing with different issues: all the factors involved in the urban design process cross various domain knowledge, from different competencies and sources; the knowledge is both semantic and procedural

Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development, 2010

When dealing with complex and multi-faceted urban design challenges, the sheer weight of the information available can make discerning the 'bigger picture' challenging. It is the suggestion of this paper that there is a requirement for intelligent tools and mechanisms to assist in the capturing, comprehending and communication of solutions to such problems whilst keeping in mind the consensus of the aims and targets. To make knowledgeable decisions, there is a need to access the most relevant sources of information possible. Quality intelligence requires a quality foundation of data. This paper will outline some fundaments of how to best structure urban components and then examine how these can be applied to assist in improving design and planning of urban precincts. In conclusion, some next steps are proposed for the development of these tools and their application within an urban context.