Abstract
GeoVisipedia (Geospatial Visual Wikipedia) is a new and novel approach to sharing knowledge about complex geospatial entities such as facilities. Facilities are composed of interconnected objects such as buildings, chemical processing units, electrical generation equipment and similar structures. Satellite imagery of a facility reveals a great deal about the organization and visual appearance of objects in a facility, but very little about the identity or function of the object. For example, given a satellite imagery of an oil refinery, an expert in refining readily identifies distillation units and can explain how they work. A non-expert would have a very difficult time identifying these objects let alone explaining how they function. To make highly complex information accessible to non-experts, GeoVisipedia associates a wiki page with objects in satellite imagery. A user selects an object in the image and a wiki page appears that provides the user with detailed information about the object. Experts can author information into the wiki and this information is shared with other users. Additionally, GeoVisipedia automatically transfers all wiki pages from one image of a facility to other imagery of the facility. Consequentially, knowledge about objects in the facility integrates over time as new imagery becomes available and as new wiki pages are created and additional information is added to existing wiki pages. In this respect, satellite imagery becomes a portal to expert knowledge and insight about objects in a facility.
