Improvements to the current documentation

[johnsamuelwrites]

Following are some ways that we could improve the documentation on Transformations

• [x] It’s important to note that we explored three or four approaches. I am not sure whether we consider DifferenceGraph as a separate approach since it enhances the data with versioning information.
• [x] It's unclear which of the above approaches is the best and the justifications associated with our decision.
• [x] It will be useful to the readers to add research articles (SAGEO 2021, 3DGeoInfo, ESWC, Technical report) associated with the chosen approaches. I think that it is important to add them to this page and the subpages.
• For each approach, the following information is required.
  • [x] Link to the input dataset (example dataset)
  • [x] Link to the output dataset (example dataset)
  • [x] Diagrams (already present)
  • [ ] Associated Docker containers (if available) or the scripts
• [x] A brief description of the main components of the diagram

Concerning the page on Gratte Ciel 2009-2018 Workspace:

• [ ] Additional information could be added, like which of these processes require manual intervention.
• [x] References to the associated research articles (SAGEO 2021, 3DGeoInfo, ESWC, Technical report)

[DiegoVinasco]

It's unclear which of the above approaches is the best and the justifications associated with our decision.

TL;DR - I would recommend the more mature implementation of [2] (ShapeChange+XML2RDF) however theoretically one is not necessarily better than the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In the end, it may depend on your use case and what UML or XSD models already exist.

From a theoretical perspective: I don't know if we can say an approach is better or worse. In articles [1,2] we discuss XSD to OWL vs UML to OWL referencing [3,4]. Both approaches have limitations and it's unclear which is better in the general case and if one is better for a specific use case.

To broadly summarize:		XSLT approach [1]	ShapeChange+XML2RDF approach [2]
Pros	Fully automated	Highly customizable transformations More concise results
Cons	Less concise results	Semi-automated

There are more notes about this on the project wiki

From a technical perspective:

• Our implementation of [2] is more mature than our implementation of [1]
• Since publication of [1], the work in [5] has further developed the approach

[1] D. Vinasco-Alvarez, J. S. Samuel, S. Servigne, and G. Gesquière, “Towards a semantic web representation from a 3D geospatial urban data model,” in SAGEO 2021, 16ème Conférence Internationale de la Géomatique, de l’Analyse Spatiale et des Sciences de l’Information Géographique., La Rochelle [Online Event], France, May 2021, pp. 227–238. [Online]. Available: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03240567

[2] D. Vinasco-Alvarez, J. S. Samuel, S. Servigne, and G. Gesquière, “Towards Limiting Semantic Data Loss In 4D Urban Data Semantic Graph Generation,” ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, vol. VIII-4/W2-2021, pp. 37–44, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.5194/isprs-annals-VIII-4-W2-2021-37-2021.

[3] S. J. D. Cox, “An explicit OWL representation of ISO/OGC Observations and Measurements,” presented at the Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Semantic Sensor Networks co-located with the 12th International Semantic Web Conference, Jan. 2013, pp. 1–18.

[4] L. Brink, P. Janssen, W. Quak, and J. Stoter, “Linking spatial data: automated conversion of geo-information models and GML data to RDF,” International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, vol. 9, pp. 59–85, Oct. 2014, doi: 10.2902/1725-0463.2014.09.art3.

[5] A. U. Usmani, M. Jadidi, and G. Sohn, “Towards the Automatic Ontology Generation and Alignment of BIM and GIS Data Formats,” in ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Oct. 2021, vol. VIII-4-W2-2021, pp. 183–188. doi: 10.5194/isprs-annals-VIII-4-W2-2021-183-2021.

[DiegoVinasco]

the remaining tasks will be completed in UD-Reproducibility