Towards the next generation of the LinkedGeoData project using virtual knowledge graphs

With the advancement of Semantic Technologies, large geospatial data sources have been increasingly published as Linked data on the Web. The LinkedGeoData project is one of the most prominent such projects to create a large knowledge graph from OpenStreetMap (OSM) with global coverage and interlinking of other data sources. In this paper, we report on the ongoing effort of exposing the relational database in LinkedGeoData as a SPARQL endpoint using Virtual Knowledge Graph (VKG) technology. Specifically, we present two realizations of VKGs, using the two systems Sparqlify and Ontop. In order to improve compliance with the OGC GeoSPARQL standard, we have implemented GeoSPARQL support in Ontop v4. Moreover, we have evaluated the VKG-powered LinkedGeoData in the test areas of Italy and Germany. Our experiments demonstrate that such system supports complex GeoSPARQL queries, which confirms that query answering in the VKG approach is efficient.