A volcano erupts: semantically mediated integration of heterogeneous volcanic and atmospheric data

We present a research effort into the application of semantic web methods and technologies to address the challenging problem of integrating heterogeneous volcanic and atmospheric data in support of assessing the atmospheric effects of a volcanic eruption. This exemplary volcano eruption scenario highlights what is true for the vast majority of data intensive Earth system investigations which have limited ability to explore important and difficult problems. This is because they are forced to find and use data representing an event or phemenonon of interest through data collections at the data-element, or syntactic, level rather than at a higher scientific, or semantic, level. Even if relevant data is found in one collection, it may not be easy or possible to find similar, related data in another collection. In many cases, syntax-only interoperability IS the state-of-the-art and at best, there are some instances of hard-wired but simple semantic enhancements (e.g. a special purpos...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CIKM
• Authors: Peter Fox, Deborah L. McGuinness, Robert Raskin, A. Krishna Sinha
• Keywords: CIKM 2007, Data Intensive Earth, Exemplary Volcano Eruption, Volcano Eruption Scenario