Multiple-domain marine data utilization structure for e-navigation.

In the maritime field, e-navigation, a new-paradigm information service framework that provides proper, accurate and timely information related to various marine activities at sea, has been widely discussed. For consistent exchange, sharing, and use of data among e-navigation services, the S-100 standard of the International Hydrographic Organization was adopted as the Common Maritime Data Structure. To provide proper information in the form of e-navigation services for various activities at sea, it is necessary to integrated, at the semantic level, S-100-based data that exists in several domains and is distributed both onboard and ashore. Whereas S-100, as the common data model, resolves the issue of syntactic interoperability among domains, it does not provide for semantic interoperability. In this paper, we introduce for the purposes of effective e-navigation, a multi-domain data utilization structure based on a marine knowledge base for support of the semantic representation of S-100-compliant data and their semantic interrelationships. The multiple-domain data utilization structure enables e-navigation services to access multiple-domain data and to find the e-navigation services best supporting their marine activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]