Open-Environmental Ontology Modeling

Current open information systems need formal semantic definitions to describe and handle information which is dealt within different interaction environments such as human-to-human, human-to-computer, and computer-to-computer interactions. This paper provides a semantic definition of the knowledge used by environmental management information systems. We describe an ontological model in UML class diagrams and present a formalization of the ontology in first-oder logic and encoded in description logic. A model transformation approach is also used to map the UML class diagram elements into web ontology language. A running example is presented to explain the ontological knowledge modeling of EMIS SOLERES cartography and satellite information.