Knowledge sharing in geographic information systems

The complexity and richness of geospatial data and the difficulty of their representation create specific problems for the interoperability of geographic information systems. This paper proposes the creation of software components from ontologies as a way to share knowledge and data. These software components are derived from ontologies using an object-oriented mapping. The translation of ontologies into active information system components leads to ontology-driven geographic information systems. The combined use of diverse ontologies and multiple inheritance leads to a discussion of implementation issues, such as the use of Ontolingua as an ontology editor, and CORBA and Java as object platforms.