Overview
ISO 24617-7:2020 - part of the ISO Semantic Annotation Framework (SemAF) - defines a standardized framework for encoding spatial and spatiotemporal information expressed in natural language. The standard covers references to locations and spatial entities, spatial relations (topological, orientational, metric), dimensional information, motion events, paths, and event-paths that are triggered by motions. It specifies an abstract metamodel and an XML-based concrete syntax for representing spatial annotations in texts, enabling consistent annotation for downstream NLP and AI systems.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Scope and terminology: Precise definitions for terms such as location, place, path, event-path, figure, ground, motion, and measure.
- Abstract syntax and metamodel (Clause 7): Formal structures for annotation vs. representation; a metamodel that underpins consistent semantic annotation of spatial information.
- XML-based concrete syntax (Clause 8): A normative XML representation for spatial annotations (root tag ``), with basic entity tags and link tags for relations.
- Entity tags and attributes: Standardized element types such as ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, and ****.
- Link types and relations: Structured links for expressing relations between entities - for example movement links (e.g.,
), **measure links** (), and qualification links, each with required arguments (figure/ground) and optional attributes (e.g., @trigger, @bounds).
- Conventions for tagging: Naming, inline tagging extents, and representation conventions to ensure interoperable corpora.
- Normative references: Integrates with ISO 24617-1 (time & events) and ISO 24617-6 (principles of semantic annotation).
Practical applications and users
ISO 24617-7 is designed for practitioners who need reliable, interoperable spatial annotations in language resources:
- NLP engineers and computational linguists building spatially aware models (named entity recognition, question answering, inference).
- Corpus linguists and annotators creating richly annotated text corpora with spatial/motion semantics.
- AI and robotics teams that require parsed natural-language descriptions of motion and location.
- Geospatial analysts and semantic web developers linking textual spatial descriptions to GIS or knowledge graphs.
- Language resource managers ensuring consistent metadata and annotation formats.
Adopting ISO 24617-7 supports reproducible research, tool interoperability, and improved spatial reasoning in language technologies.
Related standards
- ISO 24617-1: Semantic annotation framework - Part 1: Time and events (SemAF-Time / ISO-TimeML)
- ISO 24617-6: Semantic annotation framework - Part 6: Principles of semantic annotation (SemAF Principles)
Open preview (PDF)Language resource management — Semantic annotation framework — Part 7: Spatial information