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Monday, May 22, 2006

Semantic Web

Yet another new thing to learn about?

This was posted to the DIGLIB list on May 20, as part of a call for papers.

Semantic transportation data models

An underpinning of any effort to share data is getting agreement on the exact meaning of individual data elements and their relationships. This activity occurs within individual transportation agencies - for example, as part of a data warehousing effort; and in the context of larger data standards setting and data exchange efforts. Precise documentation of meaning is essential for data sharing - it allows a potential data user to determine the suitability of a data set, and it provides the basis for translation across different data elements.

With the emergence of the semantic web, progress is being made in many domains on development of semantic data models or ontologies - using the W3C Resource description Framework (RDF) language, the Ontology Web Language (OWL), or ISO 13250-1 Topic Maps. These are precise specifications of information elements that can be used to improve "findability" on the web and to support intelligent web services.

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