Central Ontology

Central ontology is not directly used by IPSM, but it needs to be established for a given IPSM deployment, to enable construction of consistent alignments. It is modularized, so that alignments can be created to and from selected modules, e.g. meteorological, logistic events, depending on the context of "conversation". Specifically, there is no need to align the whole data models if an artifact that needs to be connected to the ecosystem exchanges only message related only to one aspect e.g. meteorological observation data.

Central ontology in INTER-IoT is based on GOIoTP (Generic Ontology of IoT Platforms) and domain specific modules. In case of INTER-LogP pilot additional modules are Logico ontology, Logiserv ontology, Valencia Port ontology. In case of INTER-Health pilot additional modules are provided by UniversAAL platform ontology.

GOIoTP and GOIoTPex modules GOIoTP and GOIoTPex modules

In general case, central ontology can be any aribitrary ontology, since this does not influence the semantic translation engine provided by IPSM. However, semantic engineer preparing the deployment should keep in mind that:

  • central ontology should cover all "topics" of conversations in platforms ecosystem
  • it should be clear enough to enable querying and reasoning done directly on it
  • it should contain subject-specific modules that can be independently maintained and versioned (for easier change management)