Giving Meaning to GI Web Service Descriptions

Composition of web services based on currently available descriptions such as WSDL are error-prone because the meaning (or semantics) of the labels used in these syntactic descriptions is unclear. We identify three types of problems that can result from semantically heterogeneous descriptions during service composition. These problems call for a Semantic Reference System for semantically annotating symbols, i.e. referencing symbols to concepts and semantically grounding these concepts. We present a three-level architecture for such a Semantic Reference System and illustrate how it can be used for solving the problems identified. Our example for illustration purposes is taken from the domain of disaster management and focuses on the composition of geographic information services.