Experiences of Using Linked Data and Ontologies for Operational Data Sharing in Systems-of-Systems

This paper addresses the problem of exchanging complex data between the constituent systems in a system-of-systems. This is necessary to ensure that they have compatible understandings of the world surrounding them and entails a need for semantic interoperability between the constituents. Through a case study of a road construction system-of-systems, the world wide web technologies of linked data and ontologies are explored as a framework for data representation and exchange. This data includes several broad categories, such as assets, interfaces, organizations, capabilities, missions, and observations, as well as various properties of those. It is also discussed how the constituents can use this data for reasoning and decision making. The results have been validated through a simulation-based research prototype of the road construction case, from which experiences are reported.