Ontology-Based Mediation of OGC Catalogue Service for the Web - A Virtual Solution for Integrating Coastal Web Atlases

In recent years significant momentum has occurred in the development of Internet resources for decision makers and scientists interested in the coast. Chief among these has been the development of coastal web atlases (CWAs). While multiple benefits are derived from these tailor-made atlases (e.g., speedy access to multiple sources of coastal data and information), the potential exists to derive added value from the integration of disparate CWAs, to optimize decision making at a variety of levels and across themes. This paper describes the development of a semantic mediator prototype to provide a common access point to coastal data, maps and information from distributed CWAs. The prototype showcases how ontologies and ontology mappings can be used to integrate different heterogeneous and autonomous atlases, using the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Catalogue Services for the Web.