Elements of Semantic Web Infrastructure for Maritime Information

Raphael Malyankar

Abstract:	This paper describes elements of SemanticWeb infrastructure for maritime information, including navigation information. The work is motivated by the need to prepare maritime information representation and distribution for future-generation Web technology, especially the Semantic Web. The infrastructure elements described here consist of computational ontologies and a prototype XML-based markup language for maritime information. Computational ontologies and markup languages for a domain are both essential for developing Semantic Web applications for that domain. The first phase of the work consists of the construction of a computational ontology for navigation information and nautical chart symbology. (A computational ontology for a domain consists of a collection of concepts defined in the domain and the relationships between these concepts, expressed in a form that can be processed by software.) Ontological information is acquired from multiple sources, including standards documents, database schemas, lexicons, collections of symbology definitions. The sources of ontological knowledge and the contribution of each source to the overall ontology are described in this paper. In the second phase, the computational ontology is used to create a prototype of the language - Maritime Information Markup Language (MIML)- for tagging documents within the maritime domain. An overview of this prototype markup language is included. The use of this markup language and ontology in a demonstration application is then described. One application area for these information infrastructure elements described here is the integrated retrieval of maritime information from diverse sources, ranging fromWeb sites to nautical chart databases and text documents. An architecture for such a retrieval system is described. A web-based demonstration prototype based on these concepts has been developed. The work performed to date demonstrates the utility of the computational ontology as a multi-level index to diverse information sources, and in creating a uniform interface for information retrieval. The use of the MIML prototype in markup of, and extraction from, text documents is also demonstrated. The computational ontology and markup language are enabling technlogy for future smarter information retrieval and reasoning systems, for example, automated passage planning and intelligent navigation software.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2002 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2002 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	496 - 506
Cite this article:	Malyankar, Raphael, "Elements of Semantic Web Infrastructure for Maritime Information," Proceedings of the 2002 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2002, pp. 496-506.
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