From Stories to Spatial Knowledge: Formalizing Geospatial Narratives with Semantic Web Technologies

Day - Time: 13 May 2026, h.11:00

Place: Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa - Room: C-29

Speakers

• Nicolò Pratelli

Referent

Davide Rucci

Abstract

Narratives contain rich geospatial knowledge that is often implicit and difficult to analyze computationally. This seminar presents a framework for the formal representation of geospatial information in narratives using Semantic Web technologies. Building on the Narrative Ontology (NOnt) and its geospatial extension (NOnt+S), the approach integrates standards such as CIDOC CRM and GeoSPARQL to model spatial entities, events, and relationships. Narrative data are transformed into interoperable knowledge graphs that support querying, visualization, and semantic reasoning. Through two different case studies in bioeconomy and historical literature, we demonstrate how geospatial querying and inference can reveal spatial patterns and support knowledge discovery. This work enables narratives to be explored as structured, spatially-aware knowledge systems, fostering interdisciplinary research and new analytical perspectives.