Using a hydro-reference ontology to provide improved computer-interpretable semantics for the groundwater markup language (GWML2)

ABSTRACTComprehensive water data management requires semantically integrating various data models and ontologies that represent hydrologic knowledge. But integration is hampered by nuances in the use of water-related vocabulary (e.g. terms such as water body, aquifer, reservoir, well, etc.) across water representations and by the reliance on a mix of formal and informal specifications of how these terms are interpreted in each representation. Reconciliation of only partially formal encodings of the semantics of water representations requires manual inspection using tools from ontological analysis. This paper investigates as to what extent a domain reference ontology that is fully formalized in first-order logic can guide the ontological analysis.In particular, it is studied as to what extent the Hydro Foundational Ontology (HyFO), which encodes the semantics of a small set of unifying water concepts and associated relations in first-order logic, can serve as a reference ontology for the water domain to st...