On the concept of geographic ontology-from the viewpoints of philosophy ontology, information ontology and spatial ontology

Geographic ontology is a very complex and intricate concept. As a philosophical concept, ontology has the most ambiguous meanings, and it is first introduced into information science, then into the field of GIS. In this paper, the concept of geographic ontology is studied by tracing back to the origin of ontology concept, and the meaning of ontology in philosophy and information science is reviewed. After the deep study on the meaning of geographic ontology from the viewpoints of philosophy ontology, information ontology and spatial ontology, it tries to build the basic theory system of geographic ontology. Philosophy ontology mainly refers to study geographic objects, concepts, categories, relations, processes. Spatio-temporal ontology, ontology of vagueness and ontology of scale are also the research ranges of philosophy ontology. Information ontology mainly refers to the formal specification of sharing geographic concepts, which applies to the sharing and interoperation of geographic information, integration and services of geographic information and so on. Geographic ontology is quite distinct from information ontology in that it should represent spatial properties as well as attribute properties. So spatial ontology mainly refers to the ontology related to the spatial properties of geographic information, including the ontology of spatial location, spatial shape, spatial size and spatial relation etc.