On multilevel geodata ontology

The authors discuss ontological status of the image received as a result of remote scanning or photographing. They make a statement about double nature of the images under study: these are the fields with continuous characteristics at a level of measurement and the objects at a level of classification. The images require their own ontological description, which must be different and independent of applied area ontology, which is used by experts in geoinformation systems. In the paper it is suggested to use multilevel ontology for images, by combining paradigms a field and an object and making distinctions between ontology for images and ontology for the user. On the basis of suggested structure the following two key factors can be realized: (1) supporting plural representations for one and the same image and (2) using images for detection of spatial-time configurations of geographical phenomena.