ABSTRACT
Achieving interoperability is one of the main objectives of the Internet of Things (IoT). The European Interoperability Framework designed “to support the delivery of pan-European eGovernment services to citizens and enterprises” defines only three levels: technical, semantic and organisational interoperability. Achieving interoperability on the IoT, requires a closer look at interactions of the key components in IoT ecosystems. Organizational interoperability can be realized by IoT platform federations formed by multiple partnering institutions that collaborate by sharing IoT resources in locations originally out of their reach. Semantics, as seen in linguistics and philosophy, refers to the study of meaning, which means the relation of signifiers like words, symbols or signs and their denotation. The challenge in achieving semantic interoperability is to find a way to provide this unambiguous, shared meaning of things, i.e. bridging the semantic gap between two platforms.
