Landform Reference Ontology
The landform reference ontology (LFRO) formalizes land form categories, relationships and concepts. LFRO is intended to guide design and implementation of automated mapping and delineation of landforms from digital elevation models (DEMs) and other imagery.
The rationale and design implications of grounding LFRO in the upper level ontology DOLCE has led to many new categories and relationships. LFRO is also applied to explore nuances of common natural language landform terms and implications for their automated delineation. As a domain reference ontology, LFRO should serve as a neutral foundation and provide high-level abstraction of the (landform) domain. The choice of LFRO categories is based on qualitative 3D shape concepts because landforms are apprehended as unitary things due to their characteristic shape.
