A Classification Framework for Approaches to Achieving Semantic Interoperability between GI Web Services

The discovery of services that are appropriate for answering a given question is a crucial task in the open and distributed environment of web services for geographic information. In order to find these services the concepts underlying their implementation have to be matched against the requirements resulting from the question. It is in this matchmaking process where semantic heterogeneity has to be tackled. Whether semantic interoperability can be achieved depends on the quality of the information available to the matchmaker on the semantics of requirements and resources. The explicitness, structuring and formality of this information can differ considerably leading to different types of matchmaking. In this paper a framework is presented for classifying the approaches that are currently employed or proposed for achieving semantic interoperability according to these criteria. The application of the framework is illustrated by analyzing possible solutions to three examples of semantic interoperability problems.