Il team

The team


The OnToMap project

The web application OnToMap - Mappe di Comunità 3.0 was developed with the aim of responding to citizenship emerging needs, being configured as an easy and quick tool to consult spatial data, create custom maps, report to local administrators critical issues or new proposals.

OnToMap is based on a ontology, a knowledge representation formalism, which allows to consult spatial data, spatial information and to visualize the semantic relations that exist between them. The ontological approach to the construction of decision-making processes in the context of planning represents an emerging methodology, posing as an innovative perspective for expressing the complexity of the semantic aspects relative to the territorial representation. This perspective allows to enhance the potential given by traditional eParticipation tools (PGIS, PPGIS, VGI), stimulating the search for new synergies between heterogeneous technical-scientific skills and interoperability between natural and artificial cognitive systems. Moreover, is it possible to enhance the data sources with new data, properly classified and integrated in the source database.








The information search

The semantic search

The user interface lets users select the data types of interest on a graph and displays the relevant information on a map. Through the graph it is possible to identify the constitutive dimensions of the territory, which take in account the environmental, urban, cultural and social components.

The graph representing the ontology, that lets the user select the data categories to show on the map.

The textual search

While interacting with OnToMap, it is possible to specify textual queries that also include the geographical reference, or to combine queries with the selection of an area in the map. The system is able to interpret the search query and visualize the related search results on the map.

Search results and suggestions menu in OnToMap.








The maps

The project is proposed as a tool to facilitate the dialogue between citizens and institutions, improving communication skills through an e-map of the city. Indeed, OnToMap focuses not only on the informative purposes of spatial data, but also on the development of a tool suitable for participatory decision-making processes, favoring the inclusion of citizens in the building design of public policies and, orthogonally, a reflection on territorial identity. The goal is to convey the knowledge of the perception of places, creating an indicator of territorial identity - or many territorial identities - inhabiting the city. The web application will give users the opportunity to represent the places relative to their lives and to share their feelings about specific themes and places, contributing to the creation of a cartography capable of representing values recognized by individuals and the community, using city maps with an "emotional" characterization, rich in sensations and stimuli for the local administrations.

The map that shows the selected data categories.
The system allows the sending of reports concerning a specific piece of data or a user-selected area.

Prizes and Main Publications

  • OnToMap received a Special Recognition from Piemonte Visual Contest 2014-2015, SmatCities session, for having analyzed the role of semantics within local communities in a large and reproducible way.

  • G. Torta, L. Ardissono, M. Corona, L. La Riccia, A. Savoca, A. Voghera. 2019. GeCoLan: a Constraint Language for Reasoning about Ecological Networks in the Semantic Web. In: Fred A. et al. (eds) Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, 268-293. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15640-4_14

  • L. Ardissono, M. Delsanto, M. Lucenteforte, N. Mauro, A. Savoca, and D. Scanu. 2018. Map-based Visualization of 2D/3D Spatial Data via Stylization and Tuning of Information Emphasis. In Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’18). ACM, Castiglione della Pescaia, Grosseto, Italy, Article 38, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3206505.3206516

  • N. Mauro and L. Ardissono. 2018. Session-based Suggestion of Topics for Geographic Exploratory Search. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI ’18). ACM, Tokyo, Japan, 341–352. https://doi.org/10.1145/3172944.3172957

  • G. Torta, L. Ardissono, M. Corona, L. La Riccia, A. Voghera. 2018. Ontological Representation of Constraints for Geographical Reasoning. In Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 2: KEOD, 136-147. https://doi.org/10.5220/0006960901360147

  • N. Mauro, L. Ardissono, and A. Savoca. 2017. Concept-aware Geographic Information Retrieval. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI ’17). ACM, Leipzig, Germany, 34–41. https://doi.org/10.1145/3106426.3106498

  • N. Mauro and L. Ardissono. 2017. Thematic Maps for Geographical Information Search. In Adjunct Publication of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP ’17). ACM, Bratislava, Slovakia, 337–342. https://doi.org/10.1145/3099023.3099087

  • L. Ardissono, M. Lucenteforte, N. Mauro, A. Savoca, A. Voghera and L. La Riccia. 2017. OnToMap - Semantic Community Maps for Knowledge Sharing. OnToMap: Semantic Community Maps for Knowledge Sharing. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT ’17). ACM, Prague, Czech Republic, 317–318. https://doi.org/10.1145/3078714.3078747

  • L. Ardissono, M. Lucenteforte, N. Mauro, A. Savoca, and A. Voghera. 2017. Personalised Community Maps. International Journal of Electronic Governance 9, 1-2 (2017), 156–178. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEG.2017.084648

  • L. Ardissono, M. Lucenteforte, N. Mauro, A. Savoca, A. Voghera, and L. La Riccia. 2016. Exploration of Cultural Heritage Information via Textual Search Queries. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (MobileHCI ’16). ACM, Florence, Italy, 992–1001. https://doi.org/10.1145/2957265.2962648

  • A. Voghera, R. Crivello, L.Ardissono, M. Lucenteforte, A. Savoca and L. La Riccia. 2016. Production of spatial representations through collaborative mapping. An experiment. Proc. of INPUT 2016 (9th Int. Conf. on Innovation in Urban and Regional Planning), Torino, Italy, 356-361. ISBN: 978-88-9052-964-1

  • L. Ardissono, M. Lucenteforte, A. Savoca and A. Voghera. 2014. Community Mapping for Participatory Decision-Making Processes. In Proceedings of PEGOV 2014. CEUR, vol. 1181. ISSN: 1613-0073

  • L. Ardissono, A. Voghera and M. Velluto. 2013. Selecting People for Involving Them in Participatory Decision-Making Processes. Late-Breaking Results, Project Papers and Workshop Proceedings of the 21st Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization. CEUR, Vol. 997, paper 1. ISSN: 1613-0073