Public Safety Communications Europe (PSCE) released a new white paper on semantic interoperability, building on the results of the Establish Pan-European Information Space to Enhance seCurity of Citizens (EPISECC) project.
During disaster response, semantic interoperability has always been an important part of the communication between first responders. Even though both technology and standards are constantly evolving, the terms used in communications is still challenging. The response phase usually includes many first responders using their own terminology and corresponding semantics.
Existing standards related to disaster and emergency management help, particularly if they are created by international organizations such as Red Cross, but countries’ first responders still rely on their own semantics. EPISECC project developed semantic box service, which creates semantic annotations for the messages exchanged by first responders during the disaster response phase. They receive messages enhanced with semantic annotations, which provides a receiver’s own terms of main concepts included in the message. By introducing semantic annotations during the message exchange between first responders the solution fosters mutual understanding and thus the communication as whole.
EPISECC semantic box service is based on three semantic structures: taxonomy, semantic repository and ontology for the EPISECC use case. Semantic mapping and semantic matching support the structures. The proposed solution allows users to enter, use and update their own semantic structures and performs automatic semantic matching of their concepts. A brief explanation of the service’s concept as well as developed structures and processes is given in the paper.
The paper is available here.
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