Ontology-based GML schema matching for spatial information integration

The variety and complexity of spatial data models and geographic information systems (GIS) together with the popularity of WWW have led to an increasing number of heterogeneous and autonomous geo-referenced information sources that spread over the Internet. This paper proposes a framework for integrating distributed spatial information based on GML schema matching by using ontology. GML is adopted as the common format for spatial information wrapping and mediation, and ontology is used to overcome the heterogeneity when matching different GML schemas. A prototype is also implemented based on the proposed framework.