An emergent semantics approach to semantic integration of geo-services and geo-metadata in Spatial Data Infrastructures

In this paper, we will focus on the semantic heterogeneity problem as one of the main challenges in current Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). We first report the state of the art of the current approaches and proposed solutions to overcome such semantic heterogeneity problems, focusing both on geo-services integration and geo-data integration. We then propose a general framework to integrate different application ontologies used by geographic information services providers. The proposed framework is based on a novel view of the semantics of Web services coordination, implemented by using the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) language. In this approach, the service providers share explicit knowledge of the interactions in which their services are engaged and these models of interaction are used operationally as the anchor for describing the semantics of the interaction. Moreover, to discover and integrate geo-services and related geo-metadata, semantic matching need to be performed. The proposed framework explore the applicability of the methodology and the solution proposed by the S-Match system, a semantic matching system built at the University of Trento on top of a number of approaches both at the element level and at the structural level matching. Finally, we provide and discuss a preliminary evaluation of the proposed approach.