Reasoning over Heterogeneous Geospatial Schemas: Aligning Authoritative Taxonomies and Collaborative Folksonomies Through Large Language Models

Semantic interoperability remains a critical challenge in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), particularly when aligning authoritative taxonomies with collaborative folksonomies. Traditional alignment tools often fail to bridge the semantic and structural asymmetry between these schemas. This paper evaluates the capability of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically distinguishing between traditional architectures and emerging Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), to perform semantic alignment between the Brazilian national topographic data model standard (EDGV) and OpenStreetMap (OSM). Using a formal ontology as a prompting scaffold, we tested seven model versions (including ChatGPT 5, DeepSeek R1, and Gemini 2.5) on their ability to bridge the gap between rigid hierarchical classes and the dynamic, ‘long-tail’ vocabulary of the folksonomy. Results reveal a distinct trade-off: while traditional LLMs exhibited ‘lexical rigidity’ and popularity bias—failing to map low-frequency tags—Reasoning Models demonstrated significantly improved capacity for semantic expansion, correctly identifying complex many-to-one (n:1) relationships across linguistic barriers. However, this reasoning depth often came at the cost of ‘hallucination by over-specification’ and syntactic instability in generating OWL code. We conclude that a neuro-symbolic approach, positioning LRMs as ‘Semantic Catalysts’ within a Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) workflow, provides a viable pathway for interoperability, balancing generative power with the need for logical rigor and spatial validation.