Domain ontologies for data sharing-an example from environmental monitoring using field GIS

Different geospatial information communities, public authorities as well as private institutions. recognize increasingly the World Wide Web as a medium to distribute their data. With the occurrence of national laws that push authorities to make environmental data accessible, Internet-based services have to be developed to enable the public to obtain information digitally. Dissemination of data is only one side of the coin. The other side is the use of such data. The use requires mechanisms to share data via networks. Lack of semantic interoperability has been identified as the main obstacle for data sharing. Research, however, must develop methods to overcome the problems of sharing data considering their semantics. Ontologies are considered to be one approach to support data sharing. This paper describes the use of ontologies via the Internet based on an example from field GIS supported environmental monitoring. The basic idea is that the members of different information communities get access to the meaning of data if they can approach the ontologies that have been developed by those who collected the data. This might be possible by applying the resource definition framework (RDF) and RDF/Schema. RDF can be used to define and structure terms and vocabulary used in a specific information community. The goal of the paper is to examine the role of ontologies based on the study of a particular application domain, namely stream surveying, The use of RDF/Schema is described related to the example. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.