PSCE, the Public Safety Communications Europe Forum, has published a new article on Semantic Interoperability built upon the results of the EPISECC project where our company played an active role in delivering the technical support for the tools developed within the project.

Here’s the abstract:

During the disaster response phase semantic interoperability has always been an important part of the communication between first responders. Even though both technology and standardisation are constantly evolving, this part of the communication is still very 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 organisations like 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 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: EPISECC Taxonomy, EPISECC Semantic Repository, and Ontology model for the EPISECC use case. These structures are supported by two processes: Semantic Mapping and Semantic Matching. The proposed solution allows end 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 White Paper is available for download from this address.