Towards open and interoperable information platforms for mobile users: RDF methodology and case study

The paper claims that all the databases of city interest should be taken into account by a Decision Support System (DSS) to truly inform mobile users at urban/metropolitan scale. This may be accomplished if all the relevant datasets are converted in standard RFD/XML format. However, adopting a common RDF representation of the data of city interest, also called urban data ontology, to support interoperable metropolitan information systems is not a straightforward task since it is necessary to have a data definition agreed by the community of people involved in the system. To this aim, the paper advances the proposal of developing the required data ontology using an extension of the general user model ontology (GUMO). Also, practical problems that should be solved for implementing an interoperable information platform for assisting mobile people are discussed. The first concerns how supporting the main server or the mobiles to find the servers in which the needed data are stored, whereas the other concerns how mapping on each server the data from the local format to RDF or OWL formats depending on if the system designer prefers that the data needed by the DSS are retrieved using compact SPARQL queries or ad-hoc procedures. A case study illustrates how such a system may work in practice.