Thematic Maps for Geographical Information Search

The exploration of cultural heritage information is challenged by the fact that most data provided by online resources is fragmented and it is repository or application-centered. In order to address this issue, a data integration approach should be adopted, that makes it possible to generate custom views, focused on the user's information needs, but easily extensible to support the inspection of topically related contents. In this paper, we present a model supporting the management of thematic maps for information exploration, and their integration with query expansion during the interaction with the user. Our model is based on: (i) an ontological domain knowledge representation for describing the meaning of concepts and their semantic relations; (ii) a semantic interpretation model for identifying the concepts referenced in the user's queries. We are experimenting our model in the OnToMap Participatory GIS, which manages interactive community maps for information sharing and participatory decision-making.