An Information Semantics Approach for Knowledge Management and Interoperability for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is built on current international cooperation efforts among existing distributed earth observing and processing systems. The goal is to formulate an end-to-end process that enables the collection and distribution of accurate, reliable earth observation (EO) data, information, products, and services to both suppliers and consumers worldwide. EOs are obtained from a multitude of sources and require tremendous efforts and coordination among different governments and user groups to come to a shared understanding on a set of concepts involved in a domain. Semantic metadata play a crucial role in resolving the differences in meaning, interpretation, and usage of the same or related data. Also, the knowledge about the geopolitical background of the originating datasets could be encoded in the metadata that would address the diversity on a global scale. In distributed environments like GEOSS, modularization is inevitable. In this paper, we describe the need for an information semantics-based approach for knowledge management and interoperability between heterogeneous GEOSS systems. Further, considering the magnitude of concepts involved in GEOSS, we explore the possibility of using modular ontologies for formulating smaller interconnected ontologies.