Semantic modeling and decision support in hydrology

The current revolution in interconnectivity and online availability of Earth science data has enabled hydrology end users to access a wide variety of Earth science data through the World Wide Web (WWW). However, these distributed data sources have various data formats and numerous spatial and temporal resolutions, which limits the usability of the available datasets. In this paper, we describe how we have applied semantic modeling and ontology to achieve context-based information integration. We are developing a Hydrology Decision Support System (HyDSS), a prototype state-of-the-art web-based decision support system that provides a comprehensive environment for information integration and analysis. HyDSS is a part of the Hydrology Information System (HyDIS), an overall information system to support the requirements of hydrologic end users. It is aimed at supporting the entire decision-making process of hydrological end users, i.e., it helps in information collation and can provide an interface to third-party modeling and simulation tools.