Resolving geo‐spatial semantic conflicts – an interoperability issue

Purpose – Many organizations in the local community environment use and produce geo‐spatial data, so the need for integration of geo‐data is increasing rapidly. Different user groups have different views of the world and information is available in a heterogeneous format. This paper seeks to discuss the need for interoperability in local communities taking Chittagong city of Bangladesh as an example. Design/methodology/approach – These communities use geo‐spatial data in their own format. This results in semantic conflicts, arising when there is a need for integration of the geo‐spatial data. Consequently, the interaction among the aforesaid organizations in terms of data is difficult to achieve and therefore, it is difficult to share the benefit of the recently evolving Information Technology. Taking the above viewpoint into account, this paper presents a framework to address such semantic data conflicts, considered as an issue of interoperability, using ontology. Findings – This paper presented an ontology‐based architecture which can be used in resolving semantic conflicts, enabling the tackling of the interoperability issue, faced by the various local communities. The proposed architecture will reduce the computational time significantly because it does not require processing each query every time Research limitations/implications – The architecture presented needs to test with real data in the near future. Practical implications – In order to share the geo‐data available in different formats, there is a need for developing a global community, consisting of an integrator, global schema and common ontology. Originality/value – It has been shown that the architecture allows the sharing of geo‐data by resolving geo‐semantic conflicts of the local communities. This will in turn play an important role in addressing the interoperability problem, faced by these communities.