Water resource management is becoming increasingly difficult due to the interaction of conflicting factors such as environmental sustainability and economic constraints. In Australia, the introduction of a water rights management framework is an administrative attempt to facilitate the resolution of this complex and multi-faceted problem. Policies relating to water allocation and trading have already advanced beyond our abilities to monitor, measure, report and enforce these policies. Mismanagement of this valued resource can have severe damaging long term environmental and economic effects. We believe that Semantic Web Services technologies will help decision makers minimise the risk of mismanagement. In this paper, we discuss the potential application of our dynamic service composition approach and its compatibility with other solutions. We identify the benefits for the different categories of users and discuss how ontologies can help to bridge the gap between specialists and nonspecialists, or specialists focusing on separate aspects of the overall problem.
In order for the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Australia, to build and maintain an integrated national water information system, over 240 organisations are required to provide their data to BOM. These organisations use a wide range of systems and data formats. To ensure robust and reliable data delivery, BOM has established Water Data Transfer Format (WDTF) as a standard format for data transfer. Meanwhile, the Water Regulations 2008 were enacted to specify the water information required from organisations. This paper analyses semantic gaps between data from organisations, WDTF, and the Regulations requirements, and proposes a knowledge-driven approach in which these gaps are captured in a way that facilitates data translation and validation. Throughout the paper, real data examples are used to illustrate the details of the approach and its feasibility.
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