Interoperability in Costal Zone Monitoring Systems: Resolving Semantic Heterogeneities

Ontologies are widely recommended as a means of rectifying semantic heterogeneity. The advantage of using ontologies is that they can provide a conceptual schema regardless of a data set's format, structure, or size MSU is developing an ontological framework for resolving semantic heterogeneity problems in coastal zone data. This type of framework will provide the capability to (a) link the users to the knowledge, making integrated visualizations available; (b) provide search and query answering facilities; and (c) gather information at different levels of granularity, from the subcategory to the specific data level. Issues related to coupling such a system to models will also be discussed