An integrated information platform for intelligent transportation systems based on ontology

In semantic web environment, the integration of transportation information systems develops toward semantic integration. Ontology facilitates the integration of heterogeneous data sources by resolving semantic heterogeneity among them. In this paper, we propose the system architecture of integrated information platform for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) based on ontology, including three main layers: distributed heterogeneous data source layer, information integration layer, and application system layer. Its core is the information integration layer including the ontology server and the integrated database. Key technique applied in the ontology server is studies. Firstly, the domain ontology model for transport system is presented. Then we discuss the approach to semantic integration of XML documents based on ontology. At the end we conclude that ontology is a good tool to integrate traffic information among various heterogeneous traffic management systems on semantic level.