ABSTRACT
This chapter explains an ontological representation of a geographical region, with some vessels located in the region, and a query that could be issued by a user. It presents some results of an effort to achieve the goals of net-centric operations, displaying necessary information on the consumer’s display when they need it and in a form that they can understand and act upon. The chapter shows the utility of ontologies in situation awareness in particular and in information integration in general. It focuses on a network centric environment in which multiple information producers and multiple information consumers exist. The chapter examines how the kind of knowledge can be represented using ontologies and how a generic inference engine can draw the appropriate inferences by means of Web Ontology Language axioms and domain-specific rules. It provides a discussion of how much more complicated problems, like detecting suspicious activities in maritime domain scenarios, can be achieved within the same kind of framework.
