Semantic Interoperability

This paper presents the results of the STASIS (www.stasis-project.net) project and applies it to the area of semantic interoperability within technologyenhanced learning platforms. Within the paper an innovative approach for creating a comprehensive application suite is introduced which allows partners to simplify the mapping process between data schemas of different e-Learning platforms. This mapping allows users to easily transfer content from one e-Learning platform to another and hence making it much easier to reuse e-Learning objects and to update to new e-Learning environments without spending serious resources on manual migration of content and user models.

Background • Approaches to IP integration of WSNs so far: Pure TCP/IP solutions: sensor nodes implement the TCP/IP stack (or a compatible set of protocols such as 6LoWPAN in 802.15.4 networks); and Gateway solutions: System Architecture and Networking PAGE 3 6/30/2010 • One node acts as an application layer gateway (e.g. base station), to make the lower layer protocols from both networks (e.g. TCP/IP, IEEE 802.15.4) transparent and to route information. • Sensor nodes implement the TCP/IP stack (or a compatible protocols such as 6LoWPAN in 802.15.4 networks)

Existence of interoperability within the enterprises is essential for textile supply chain to efficiently face the challenges from contemporary competitors, to find new business opportunities and to render better customer service. Exchange of business documents, being semantically consistent, is the way to achieve interoperability. However, heterogeneity of the structures of the enterprises poses challenges for establishing interoperability. Ontology based semantic interoperability framework has now been proven as an effective solution for enterprise interoperability. In this paper, the existing ontology-based interoperability solutions in the context of textile supply chain have been compiled and research gaps have been identified. The ontological methods, such as unified process for ontology (UPON) and methontology have been analyzed, and UPON have been shown as a suitable ontology development method for textile supply chain.

To establish and implement a workable e-Government, all possible and relevant stakeholders' systems need to be interconnected in such away that the hardware, software and data are interoperable. Thus, interoperability is the key to information exchange and sharing among the heterogeneous systems. In view of this, the paper introduces the Information Systems Interoperability Maturity Model (ISIMM) that defines the levels and degree of interoperability sophistication that an organisation's Information Systems will progress through. ISIMM focuses more on detailed technical aspects of interoperability that allows data to be exchanged and shared within an information system environment. In this way, it provides the practical means of assessing technical interoperability between information system pairs, groups or clusters and it facilitates a model to measure the maturity and compliancy levels of interoperability information systems.

Ontology-based approaches may be tried in e-health scenario to solve some of the interoperability problems that are non-trivial, for e.g. 'Anemometer' and 'Sphygmomanometer' are two different terms but represent the blood pressure monitor in Europe and India, respectively. The semantic interoperability issue arises when similar things are meant differently to the remotely sitting agents. Given such scenario, this paper aims to describe a framework that combines A) dialogue game with B) a decision support system (DSS) leading to resolution of such types of ontological mismatches. Under 'Dialogue game' argumentation mechanisms are used for resolving certain types of ontological mismatches. While, the DSS decides on the initiation, termination, structuring and sequencing the dialogues, as these may not be properly adjudged by the 'Dialogue game'. The framework is therefore context driven in nature, where concepts can be substituted with the similar kind of concepts (may not be accurate by searching and choosing equivalent concepts. Such framework therefore offers potential for dynamic modification of participating Ontologies and provides explanation in context of diet management in diabetes with time in a more matured way.

This research proposes recommendations that could improve interoperability in the architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) sector, by connecting domains, building lifecycles, and software systems with each other and the web. The objective has been to identify methods that promote evolution from file-based formats by advancing object-based data exchange solutions. The research design is a mapping of standards and systems that have affected the nature of object-based data exchanges, and which have either been proposed or implemented in AECO and the Oil & Gas sector. This is an approach which allows for the range and diversity of information to be examined. A review of the Oil & Gas sector confirms a norm where object-based, rather than file-based, transactions have shaped data exchange models, formats, use case methodologies, and collaboration mechanisms, thus contributing towards semantic connectivity across its diverse systems. Key research questions address the...

Over the last few years, the benefits of applying ontologies (semantic graph modelling) for Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) industry have been recognized by several researchers and industry stakeholders. One of the main motivations is because it eases AEC data manipulation and representation. However, a research question that still remains open is how to take advantage of semantic web technologies to interoperate the AEC/FM and other ontologies in a flexible and dynamical way in order to solve data structure heterogeneity problem. Because of this, we propose in this paper to apply a rule-based federated architecture to answer this research question.

本研究旨在以互通性的視野，探究如何運用知識本體及國際圖像互通架構於數位人文學。以文字型圖像材料為對象，中國漢代簡牘文書「居延漢簡」的文字釋讀及簡冊復原研究為個案，結合人文學者的簡牘研究需求，探索並建構數位研究環境的工作任務，以及其涉及的學術原語及互通性機制。首先，採用訪談法建立史學研究者進行簡牘整理的主要流程，並識別出10項學術資訊活動的功能原語；接續提出由「簡牘知識本體」、「漢字知識本體」以及「標註知識本體」等三個知識本體整合而成「簡牘學知識本體」，彼此相互關聯以支援漢簡研究的數位學術工作，以及跨機構間的漢字聯
合檢索。最後，本文以「簡牘字典」及「歷史文字資料庫統合檢索系統」，展示互通性的設計如何運用於圖像數位人文研究平台。
This study explores the use of ontologies and the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) in digital humanities from the perspective of interoperability. Focusing on imaged texts, it takes as its case study the text interpretation and slip restoration of the “Juyan Han Wooden Slips,” integrating the demands of humanities scholars in wooden slip research, and exploring and establishing the basic tasks, scholarly primitives, and interoperability mechanisms of this digital environment. The study first determines historical researchers’ basic procedure when investigating wooden slips, and discerns 10 functional primitives for these scholarly activities. It then proposes “Wooden Slip Research Ontologies” composed of interrelated “Wooden Slip,” “Chinese Character,” and “Annotation” ontologies to support digital wooden slip research and enable the cross-institutional search for Chinese characters. Finally, the integration of the Wooden Slip Dictionary and the Multidatabase Search System for Historical Chinese Characters demonstrates how interoperable design applies to digital humanities image platforms.

Enterprise wide interoperability means distributed computing on heterogeneous hardware using heterogeneous implementation languages. Successful information exchange between interoperating systems today depends on data standardization. There are several problems, however, with this approach. This paper looks at some ingredients for a more complete notion of semantic interoperability. Semantic interoperability is defined as the enablement of software systems and in particular object-based

The progress of information and communication technologies has greatly increased the quantity of data to process. Thus, managing data heterogeneity is a problem nowadays. In the 1980s, the concept of a Federated Database Architecture (FDBA) was introduced as a collection of components to unite loosely coupled federation. Semantic web technologies mitigate the data heterogeneity problem, however due to the data structure heterogeneity the integration of several ontologies is still a complex task. For tackling this problem, we propose a loosely coupled federated ontology architecture (FOWLA). Our approach allows the coexistence of various ontologies sharing common data dynamically at query execution through logical rules. We have illustrated the advantages of adopting our approach through several examples and benchmarks. We also compare our approach with other existing initiatives.

Este trabajo fin de máster es el resultado de una primera aproximación práctica al estándar ISO-CEN 13606 y al uso de terminologías clínicas como SNOMED CT; ambos relacionados con la  interoperabilidad semántica, para la implementación de un Registro Autonómico de Enfermedades Raras. El objetivo de este trabajo es ser una guía rápida para el proceso de modelado de información clínica, teniendo en cuenta una metodología de tres fases, así como el posterior  desarrollo del arquetipo mediante linkEHR. Fue elaborado por Fernando Báez Rodríguez, M. Ángeles López Orive y M. Victoria Díaz Guirado como proyecto final del Máster en Dirección de Sistemas y TIC de la Salud. Escuela Nacional de Sanidad. Madrid. 2016-2017.

Objectives: In the fieldofopenelectronic health records(EHRs), openEHRasanarchetype-based approach is beingincreasingly recognised. It is theobjectiveofthispapertoshortly describe this approach, andtoanalyse how openEHR archetypesimpacton healthprofessionals andsemantic interoperability. Methods: Analysis of current approaches to EHRsystems, terminology and standards developments. In additiontoliterature reviews,weorganised face-to-face and additionaltelephone interviews andtele-conferences with membersofrelevant organisationsand committees. Results: The openEHR archetypesapproach enables syntactic interoperability andsemantic interpretability -bothimportantprerequisites forsemantic interoperability.Archetypesenable theformal definition of clinical contentbyclinicians.Toenable comprehensive semanticinteroperability, the developmentand maintenance of archetypesneedstobecoordinated internationally andacross healthprofessions. Domain knowledge governance comprises aset of processesthatenable thecreation,development, organisation,sharing, dissemination,use andcontinuous maintenance of archetypes. It needstobesupported by information technology. Conclusions: To enable EHRs,semantic interoperability is essential. The openEHR archetypesapproach enables syntactic interoperability andsemantic interpretability. However,without coordinated archetype development andmaintenance, 'rankgrowth' of archetypeswould jeopardizesemantic interoperability.Wetherefore believe that openEHR archetypesand domain knowledge governance together createthe knowledge environment requiredtoadopt EHRs.

This paper addresses issues arising from the first steps in mapping different (a) datasets and (b) vocabularies to the CIDOC CRM, within an RDF implementation. We first discuss practical implementation issues for mapping datasets to the CRM-EH and then discuss practical issues converting domain thesauri to the SKOS Core standard representation. We finally discuss, at a more theoretical level, issues concerning the mapping of domain thesauri to upper (core) ontologies.

Integrating clinical research data entry with patient care data entry is a challenging issue. At the G. Pompidou European Hospital (HEGP), pulmonary function testing reports are captured twice, first in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) and then in Clinical Data Management System (CDMS). Statuary requirements and data standards are different for EHR and clinical research. So, this work has for object to suggest an integration solution between EHR and CDMS. This object can be divided in two steps: the first consists in modeling clinical research workflow in a university hospital environment in order to investigate the possible use of her in this context. The second step consist in conceiving, implementing and assessing an integration solution between EHR and CDMS taking into consideration standardization efforts and statuary requirements. The REUSE demonstrator showed that automatic transfer of data reduces errors risk, and enables to preserve collected data during clinical trials in the EHR that may be useful. We proposed the integration profile “Retrieve and Integrate Form for Data Capture”. Beyond syntactic interoperability, a perspective is to implement this integration profile in the REUSE demonstrator in order to address the issue of semantic interoperability between both domains.

The geospatial domain is influenced by the Web developments; consequently, an increasing number of geospatial web services become available through Internet. A rich description of geospatial web services is required to resolve semantic heterogeneity and achieve semantic interoperability of geospatial web services. However, existing geospatial web services descriptions and semantic mapping approaches employed to reconcile them are not always rich

We propose a model for a Resource Description Format (RDF) database for interlinear glossed text (IGT) created from documents encoded in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) using markup metaschemas. A metaschema, constructed using the Semantic Interpretation Language (SIL) (Simons 2004) maps XML-encoded documents to a common semantically rich RDF database. The RDF database in turn can be searched using RDFsearch engines providing the key functionality of a database management system (DBMS). Simons et al. (2004) gives a proof of concept of the model by mapping differently encoded XML lexicons to a common RDF form. Search capability is provided across these data using SeRQL, a SQL-like query language built around the Sesame RDF database program. In this paper, we extend these results to corpora of interlinear glossed text obtained from various sources, including some from the Web following Lewis (2003), combined with a language profile for each language variety, which provides basic grammatical information about that variety.

Social media in general, and Facebook in particular, have used word 'metaverse extensively. Are you aware what it is? And When Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta, , people really were intrigued. The metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects while operating virtual representations-or avatars-of themselves. Think of a combination of immersive virtual reality, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and the web.

NEW ITEM:
linearity and convergence embedded in a nonlinear model 23022023
Entering the new world of distance learning
PREAMBLE
1ère Partie: Pérennité d’une évolution architecturale
INTRODUCTION
Comment SPDF empêche la rupture dans une architecture logicielle évolutive ?
I - Web Services Interoperability
II - How SPDF prevents discontinuities in software architecture lifecycle?
Engine for Virtual Learning including tools, standards and new learning approach according to Predictable and Unpredictable Events.
III - An Implementation of EDIAUDIT on a data certification server
2ème PARTIE: Profilage client un outil basé sur mon expérience e-learning : le pourquoi pour justifier tel développement ?
Profilage d’un client : nom de l’outil « Customer Self Service »
Le pourquoi pour justifier un tel développement ?
ANNEX I - Echange avec Software AG
Annex II
LEGACY OF Al farabi & Arabic linguistic semantics-scenarii concept
EXCERPT:
How SPDF prevents discontinuities in software architecture lifecycle?
Full interoperability will be achieved because SPDF (Standard Process Description Format) specifies business interaction among roles involved in information system. The specification by a business user, coupled with semantic decomposition into process element, provides a novel business integration infrastructure. The integration through SPDF will bridge gaps between communities which are using different standards so far which are needed for specific business contexts.
Source: An Implementation of EDIAUDIT on a data certification server
Amin Elsaleh, Managing Director, VANEDI Ltd, UK
The implementation of the EDIAUDIT tool on a data certification server is based on the bridging concept between EDI and SGML. This enables the control of interdependency rules which might exist between data and provides additional features for securing business transactions.
http://xml.coverpages.org/paris9802.html
references: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=671880

When making design and construction decisions, planners must consider information from different scales and domains. Currently, building and geospatial data are shared and exchanged through a common data format, such as industry foundation classes (IFC). Because of the diversity and complexity of domain knowledge across building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) systems, however, these syntactic approaches are not capable of completely sharing semantic information that is unique in each system. This study uses semantic web technology to ensure semantic interoperability between existing BIM and GIS tools. The proposed approach is composed of three main steps: ontology construction, semantic integration through interoperable data formats and standards, and query of heterogeneous information sources. The completeness of the methodology is validated through a case study.

Since the early 2000s, building information modeling (BIM) has been used through the entire project life cycle to facilitate effective project collaboration and integration of data to support project activities. Despite the successful applications of BIM in the design and construction stages, the use of BIM for preconstruction planning has not gained wide acceptance as in other project phases. The integration of BIM and geospatial analyses can offer substantial benefits to manage the planning process during the design and preconstruction stages. However, this integration suffers from a lack of interoperability across the geospatial and BIM domains. Semantic web technology is used in this study to convey meaning, which is interpretable by both construction project participants as well as BIM and geographic information systems (GIS) applications processing the transferred data. To achieve this, we first translate building's elements and GIS data into a semantic web data format. Then we use a set of standardized ontologies for construction operations to integrate and query the heterogeneous spatial and temporal data. Finally, we use a query language to access and acquire the data in semantic web format. Through two scenario examples, the potential usefulness of the proposed methodology is validated.

Public sector entities face huge challenges, with a view to meet the objectives of a more competent, softer, effective and efficient Public Administration, regarding its services to citizens and firms
The change resulting from public policies in the framework of e-gov, oblige to rethink the way organizations interact with one another, the way they perform their processes, with whom and with what kind of competencies.
Dematerialization became inevitable and the implementation of transversal document, content and process management systems gain relevance as well as all the issues related to the document lifecycle. The complexity of these projects requires a very strict project planning and management, in order to help the organization to fulfill the established objectives.
Assuming that these projects transform the organization, all the matters related to the people become a key aspect to manage. The way people is involved in the change process is decisive to their commitment with the common objective that the project aims to attain. Professional training, as well as the development and emergence of new competencies make the change easier and contribute to individual and collective learning.

A fundamental requirement for achieving continuity of care is commonly accepted to be the integration and interoperability of different clinical oriented systems towards the realization of a "longitudinal" Electronic Healthcare Record. To enable seamless integration of various kinds of IT applications into a healthcare network, a commonly accepted framework based on international relevant standards has become an urgent need. However, there is much marketplace confusion today in the healthcare domain, due to the variety of overlapping or complementary interoperability standards and initiatives, which have evolved over the years addressing integration of applications at different levels. This chapter provides a brief overview of the most relevant Electronic Healthcare Record standards, by examining the level of interoperability and functionality they provide, in terms of context, structure, access services, multimedia support, and security, to provide healthcare decision-makers and system integrators with a clear perspective regarding the capabilities and limitations of each standard.

During the last decades, digital media have revolutionised media reproduction. The availability of cheap consumer electronic devices that allow the consumption and management of digital multimedia content (eg MP3 players, digital cameras, DV camcorders, smart phones) has caused a media availability explosion. The amount of digital media that has been generated and stored, and which continues to be at an exponential rate, has already become unmanageable without fine-grained computerised support.

O livro aborda como as ontologias digitais leves podem ser criadas  a partir de padrões descritivos e de preparação à interoperabilidade. Como a taxonomia e os metadados administrativos e descritivos operados pela Descrição Arquivística formam esta Ontologia Digital Arquivística que facilita a representação de contextos em sistemas digitais como SIGAD (Sistema Informatizado de Gestão Arquivística de Documentos) e RDC-Arq (Repositórios Permanentes) e na web.

El uso de sistemas informáticos en el área clínica
permite que los profesionales de la salud manejen mayor
cantidad y variedad de información de forma efectiva y
eficiente, aumentando su capacidad de resolución de
problemas de salud y la calidad asistencial de los pacientes.
Estos son sistemas complejos, difíciles de mantener a largo
plazo, y de costos elevados en su construcción y
mantenimiento, tanto en tiempo como en recursos humanos y
económicos. La falta de aplicación de estándares y buenas
prácticas en su diseño y construcción repercute negativamente en la calidad global del producto final. Esta situación pone en riesgo la viabilidad de los proyectos de informatización del área clínica, a gran escala y largo plazo. En este trabajo planteamos un enfoque distinto en la construcción de sistemas de información en salud, que busca sortear los problemas mencionados, en pos de viabilizar los proyectos de informatización del área clínica en contextos de recursos limitados (económicos y humanos), apuntando a la creación de sistemas informáticos de calidad, basados en estándares, mantenibles a largo plazo y a costos controlados.
Se propone la creación de una herramienta de software para la automatización de tareas en el desarrollo informáticos y un
proceso de desarrollo drásticamente diferente al proceso
actual, donde el profesional de la salud pasa a jugar el rol de
mayor importancia en el proceso, donde el foco está en la
gestión del conocimiento clínico, dejando la tecnología en un
segundo plano. Con el enfoque propuesto se podrían crear
sistemas de registro clínico de gran calidad, en menos tiempo, y con un menor consumo de recursos. Estos sistemas estarían basados en estándares, creados para ser modificados y capaces de evolucionar a largo plazo sin necesidad de modificar el código fuente del software.

A b s t r a c t Health care provides many opportunities in which the sharing of data between independent sites is highly desirable. Several standards are required to produce the functional and semantic interoperability necessary to support the exchange of such data: a common reference information model, a common set of data elements, a common terminology, common data structures, and a common transport standard. This paper addresses one component of that set of standards: the ability to create a document that supports the exchange of structured data components. Unfortunately, two different standards development organizations have produced similar standards for that purpose based on different information models: Health Level 7 (HL7)'s Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM International) Continuity of Care Record (CCR). The coexistence of both standards might require mapping from one standard to the other, which could be accompanied by a loss of information and functionality. This paper examines and compares the two standards, emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses of each, and proposes a strategy of harmonization to enhance future progress. While some of the authors are members of HL7 and/or ASTM International, the authors stress that the viewpoints represented in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the official viewpoints of either HL7 or of ASTM International.

Interoperable enterprise systems (be they supply chains, extended enterprises, or any form of virtual organizations) must be designed, controlled, and appraised from a holistic and systemic point of view. Systems interoperability is a key to enterprise integration, which recommends that the IT architecture and infrastructure be aligned with business process organization and control, themselves designed according to a strategic view expressed in an enterprise architecture. The paper discusses architectures and methods to build interoperable enterprise systems, advocating a mixed service and process orientation, to support synchronous and/or asynchronous operations, both at the business level (business events, business services, business processes) and at the application level (workflow, IT and Web services, application programs). #

This paper suggests a new approach for the development of healthcare information standards, which is based on widely used and open frameworks. The paper attempts a review of existing standards for healthcare information, analyses their deficiencies and focuses on the need for interoperability. Healthcare information, in order to be useful, has to be well formed, valid and flexible. Healthcare information standards are the pre-requisites for well-formed ness and validity of information. Flexibility expects "plug-and-play" information, which will be operable in any system, any time and any place. A standard that will be accepted world-wide and will cover all possible aspects of healthcare information needs sounds both infeasible and inconvenient due to its size and complexity. A more practicable solution is to provide an interconnection mechanism on top of all existing and future standards. This work specifies the two fundamental problems of information interoperability, which are structure and semantics, and suggests a mechanism that facilitates the integration of existing information, the mutation and transfer of information between healthcare information systems and eases interoperability.

Telemedicine is gaining popularity due to its high potential for cost savings and increased efficiency in healthcare delivery. However, most telemedicine systems available in the markets are limited to particular applications and lack interoperability with other information systems and measurement devices. In this paper, we present a generic service platform, which is applicable in a wide range of telemedicine applications

Background: There are different approaches for repurposing clinical data collected in the Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) for use in clinical research. Semantic integration of ''siloed'' applications across domain boundaries is the raison d'être of the standards-based profiles developed by the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative -an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry promoting the coordinated use of established standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. In particular, the combination of two IHE profiles -the integration profile ''Retrieve Form for Data Capture'' (RFD), and the IHE content profile ''Clinical Research Document'' (CRD) -offers a straightforward approach to repurposing EHR data by enabling the pre-population of the case report forms (eCRF) used for clinical research data capture by Clinical Data Management Systems (CDMS) with previously collected EHR data. Objective: Implement an alternative solution of the RFD-CRD integration profile centered around two approaches: (i) Use of the EHR as the single-source data-entry and persistence point in order to ensure that all the clinical data for a given patient could be found in a single source irrespective of the data collection context, i.e. patient care or clinical research; and (ii) Maximize the automatic pre-population process through the use of a semantic interoperability services that identify duplicate or semanticallyequivalent eCRF/EHR data elements as they were collected in the EHR context. Methods: The RE-USE architecture and associated profiles are focused on defining a set of scalable, standards-based, IHE-compliant profiles that can enable single-source data collection/entry and cross-system data reuse through semantic integration. Specifically, data reuse is realized through the semantic mapping of data collection fields in electronic Case Report Forms (eCRFs) to data elements previously defined as part of patient care-centric templates in the EHR context. The approach was evaluated in the context of a multi-center clinical trial conducted in a large, multi-disciplinary hospital with an installed EHR. Results: Data elements of seven eCRFs used in a multi-center clinical trial were mapped to data elements of patient care-centric templates in use in the EHR at the George Pompidou hospital. 13.4% of the data elements of the eCRFs were found to be represented in EHR templates and were therefore candidate for pre-population. During the execution phase of the clinical study, the semantic mapping architecture enabled data persisted in the EHR context as part of clinical care to be used to pre-populate eCRFS for use without secondary data entry. To ensure that the pre-populated data is viable for use in the clinical research context, all pre-populated eCRF data needs to be first approved by a trial investigator prior to being persisted in a research data store within a CDMS. Conclusion: Single-source data entry in the clinical care context for use in the clinical research context -a process enabled through the use of the EHR as single point of data entry, can -if demonstrated to be a viable strategy -not only significantly reduce data collection efforts while simultaneously increasing 1532-0464/$ -see front matter Ó

A major challenge of any product engineering project is to support the creation, exchange, management and archival of information about product, process, people and services across the networked and extended enterprise covering the entire product lifecycle spectrum. An information support system for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) requires a move from product data exchange to product information and knowledge exchange across different disciplines and domains. PLM support systems will need to have both syntactic and semantic interoperability of computer systems and people through well defined standards.

One of the key problems in healthcare informatics is the lack of interoperability among different healthcare information systems. Interoperability can be investigated in different categories in the eHealth domain, such as the interoperability of the messages exchanged between healthcare applications, interoperability of Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs), interoperability of patient identifiers, coding terms, clinical guidelines and healthcare business processes. Furthermore, all these categories can be investigated in two major layers: syntactic interoperability layer and the semantic interoperability layer. This paper describes the concepts involved in eHealth interoperability; briefly assesses the current state in some of the countries in the world and discusses the technical issues to be addressed for achieving interoperability.

One of the key problems in healthcare informatics is the inability to share patient records across enterprises. To address this problem, an important industry initiative called "Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)" specified the "Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS)" Profile.

Pervasive computing and Internet of Things (IoTs) paradigms have created a huge potential for new business. To fully realize this potential, there is a need for a common way to abstract the heterogeneity of devices so that their functionality can be represented as a virtual computing platform. To this end, we present novel semantic level interoperability architecture for pervasive computing and IoTs. There are two main principles in the proposed architecture. First, information and capabilities of devices are represented with semantic web knowledge representation technologies and interaction with devices and the physical world is achieved by accessing and modifying their virtual representations. Second, global IoT is divided into numerous local smart spaces managed by a semantic information broker (SIB) that provides a means to monitor and update the virtual representation of the physical world. An integral part of the architecture is a resolution infrastructure that provides a means to resolve the network address of a SIB either using a physical object identifier as a pointer to information or by searching SIBs matching a specification represented with SPARQL. We present several reference implementations and applications that we have developed to evaluate the architecture in practice. The evaluation also includes performance studies that, together with the applications, demonstrate the suitability of the architecture to real-life IoT scenarios. In addition, to validate that the proposed architecture conforms to the common IoTA architecture reference model (ARM), we map the central components of the architecture to the IoT-ARM.

Integrated health care systems Systems analysis Software process engineering Model-Driven Architecture Semantic interoperability Unified process HL7 a b s t r a c t Background: Semantic interoperability is a basic challenge to be met for new generations of distributed, communicating and co-operating health information systems (HIS) enabling shared care and e-Health. Analysis, design, implementation and maintenance of such systems and intrinsic architectures have to follow a unified development methodology. Methods: The Generic Component Model (GCM) is used as a framework for modeling any system to evaluate and harmonize state of the art architecture development approaches and standards for health information systems as well as to derive a coherent architecture development framework for sustainable, semantically interoperable HIS and their components. The proposed methodology is based on the Rational Unified Process (RUP), taking advantage of its flexibility to be configured for integrating other architectural approaches such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), ISO 10746, and HL7 Development Framework (HDF).

The increasing availability of sensor devices has resulted in important volumes of sensor data, which has raised the issue of making these data fully discoverable and interpretable by applications and end-users. The idea of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) has addressed this issue by proposing a set of standards to enable accessibility of sensor data over the Web. Similarly, there is a growing interest in volunteered geographic information (VGI). Considering that several researchers have highlighted the potential of this new type of information as a complement to existing, "traditional" data, it becomes important to develop frameworks to support the integration of VGI from several sources and with other types of data. In this paper, we make a first step in this direction by proposing a framework for the semantic interoperability of sensor data and VGI. After having performed an investigation of the types of VGI applications, we have developed a conceptual model of VGI aligned with relevant ISO standards for describing geospatial features. The purpose of this model is to support the generation of common descriptions for VGI applications, which will act as interfaces to higher-level services, such as discovery and reasoning services, in order to be exploited in conjunction with sensor data by client applications. This process is described through architecture for semantic interoperability of sensor data and VGI that we have developed and that we intend to use to set guidelines for future research on integration of VGI in sensor data cyberinfrastructures. We illustrate the OPEN ACCESS

The GIIDA project aims to develop a digital infrastructure for the spatial information within CNR. It is foreseen to use semantic-oriented technologies to ease information modeling and connecting, according to international standards like the ISO/IEC 11179. Complex information management systems, like GIIDA, will take benefit from the use of terminological tools like thesauri that make available a reference lexicon for the indexing and retrieval of information. Within GIIDA the goal is to make available the EARTh thesaurus (Environmental Applications Reference Thesaurus), developed by the CNR-IIA-EKOLab. A web-based software, developed by the CNR-Water Research Institute (IRSA) was implemented to allow consultation and utilization of thesaurus through the web. This service is a useful tool to ensure interoperability between thesaurus and other systems of the indexing, with, the idea of cooperating to develop a comprehensive system of knowledge organization, that could be defined integrated, open, multi-functional and multilingual. Currently the system is available in multiple languages mode (Italian - English) and navigation can be done in the following ways: Alphabetical, Hierarchical and for Themes. A full search allows to find any term by searching for the whole term or a part of it and as well as allows to filter the results by themes. Within a collaborative initiative with the CNR-Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technology (IMATI) a SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) version of EARTh was developed. This will ensure the possibility to support the use of the thesaurus within the framework of the Semantic Web in order to be used in decentralized metadata applications

Within the archaeology domain, datasets frequently refer to time periods using a variety of textual or numeric formats. Traditionally controlled vocabularies of time periods have used classification notation and the collocation of terms in the printed form to represent and convey tacit information about the relative order of concepts. The emergence of the semantic web entails encoding this knowledge into machine readable forms, and so the meaning of this informal ordering arrangement can be lost. Conversion of controlled vocabularies to Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) format provides a formal basis for semantic web indexing but does not facilitate chronological inference -as thesaurus relationship types are an inappropriate mechanism to fully describe temporal relationships. This becomes an issue in archaeological data where periods are often described in terms of (e.g.) named monarchs or emperors, without additional information concerning relative chronological context. An exercise in supplementing existing controlled vocabularies of time period concepts with dates and temporal relationships was undertaken as part of the Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources (STAR) project. The general aim of the STAR project is to demonstrate the potential benefits in cross searching archaeological data conforming to a common overarching conceptual data structure schema -the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). This paper gives an overview of STAR applications and services and goes on to particularly focus on issues concerning the extraction and representation of time period information.

The Web of Data is an open environment consisting of a great number of large inter-linked RDF datasets from various do-mains. In this environment, organizations and companies adopt the Linked Data practices utilizing Semantic Web (SW) tech-nologies, in order to publish their data and offer SPARQL endpoints (i.e., SPARQL-based search services). On the other hand, the dominant standard for information exchange in the Web today is XML. Additionally, many international standards (e.g., Dublin Core, MPEG-7, METS, TEI, IEEE LOM) in several domains (e.g., Digital Libraries, GIS, Multimedia, e-Learning) have been expressed in XML Schema. The aforementioned have led to an increasing emphasis on XML data, accessed using the XQuery query language. The SW and XML worlds and their developed infrastructures are based on different data models, semantics and query languages. Thus, it is crucial to develop interoperability mechanisms that allow the Web of Data users to access XML datasets, using SPARQL, from their own working environments. It is unrealistic to expect that all the existing legacy data (e.g., Relational, XML, etc.) will be transformed into SW data. Therefore, publishing legacy data as Linked Data and providing SPARQL endpoints over them has become a major research challenge. In this direction, we introduce the SPARQL2XQuery Framework which creates an interoperable environment, where SPARQL queries are automatically translated to XQuery queries, in order to access XML data across the Web. The SPARQL2XQuery Framework provides a mapping model for the expression of OWL–RDF/S to XML Schema mappings as well as a method for SPARQL to XQuery translation. To this end, our Framework supports both manual and automatic mapping specification between ontologies and XML Schemas. In the automatic mapping specification scenario, the SPARQL2XQuery exploits the XS2OWL component which transforms XML Sche-mas into OWL ontologies. Finally, extensive experiments have been conducted in order to evaluate the schema transfor-mation, mapping generation, query translation and query evaluation efficiency, using both real and synthetic datasets.