A Case Study for Semantic Translation of the Water Framework Directive and a Topographic Database

On the basis of a case study this paper develops a mechanism for access to multiple databases on a semantical level and outlines semantic commonalities and differences between the concepts of information communities. Although semantic translation won't overcome all differences between ontologies due to domain differences, it nevertheless serves as a bridge between the different world views, translates the meaning from one information community to another and enables portability of ontologies. In particular the paper describes the different structure of location in the conceptualizations of the datasets in the case study. The task in the scenario can be solved by integrating the world views of two particular datasets, but not simple data integration.