Information and source quality ontology in support of maritime situational awareness

Abstract

To support situation awareness, the benefit of using a variety of sources is undeniable although it brings additional challenges related to possible conflicting information, heterogeneity in data formats, semantics, uncertainty types, and information quality. Information and source quality are intertwined concepts which assessments connect with the evaluation of uncertainty handling in information fusion solutions. While the Uncertainty Representation Reasoning Evaluation Framework (URREF) ontology focuses on assessment criteria, peripheral concepts still play a critical role. In this paper, we propose an Information and Source Quality (ISQ) ontology formalising the relationships between information-related concepts, and discuss information interpretation in support of Maritime Situation Awareness. Specifically, this paper links the concepts of Information Source, Dataset and Piece of Information, and connects them to the corresponding quality concepts. Such concepts link to the upper level concepts of the URREF ontology Source (of information) and data Quality. The ontology further expands to the uncertainty modelling and the algorithm design. We conclude on future work and identify future avenues, especially the extension to the formalisation of the evaluation process.