Data Integration by Semantic Normalisation

Abstract

Data integration is a topic as old as environmental informatics, but still each single use case raises extensive individual efforts. We distinguish between organisational, methodical and technical issues. The Federal Environment Agency, Germany (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) has started a research and development project Linked Environment Data (LED) (UFOPLAN 3712 12 1003) in the summer of 2012, focussing on the applicability of Semantic Web technology for the technical integration. The resulting approach was named semantic normalisation . It is based on Linked Data patterns which are extended by shared RDF schemas and shared reference concept schemes. On top of this normalisation, applications can explore data from all participating datasets at one time, gathering knowledge from different sources.