Semantic interoperability: A central issue for sharing geographic information

Technical interoperability has provided geographic information communities with substantial improvements for constructing GIS capable of very low fric tion and dynamic data exchanges. These technical advances stand to provide substantial advantages for sharing geographic information, however reaping these advantages in highly heterogeneous operational and organizational env ironments requires the understanding and resolution of semantic differences . While the OpenGIS consortium has made important progress on technical int eroperability, semantic interoperability still remains an unpassed hurdle f or efforts to share geographic information across organizational and instit utional boundaries at the local, regional, and other levels. Identifying an d resolving semantic interoperability issues is especially pertinent for da ta sharing and considering future developments of standards. This paper pre sents an overview of semantic interoperability and through case studies sho ws the breadth and depth of issues and approaches in different countries an d at different levels of organizations. These cases illustrate the importan ce of developing flexible approaches to practical data sharing problems tha t merge semantical with technical considerations. Based on our examinations of semantic issues and approaches in ongoing research projects, we propose cognitive, computer science, and socio-technical frameworks for examining semantic interoperability.