Enhancing Data and Processes Integration and Interoperability in Emergency Situations: a SWS based Emergency Management System.

In this paper we describe a powerful use case application in the area of emergency situations management in which to illustrate the benefits of a system based on Semantic Web Services (SWS), through the automation of the business processes involved. After creating Web services to provide spatial data to third parties through the Internet, semantics and domain ontologies were added to represent the business processes involved, allowing: ease of access and combination of heterogeneous data from different providers; and automatic discovery, access and composition to perform more complex tasks. In this way, our prototype contributes to better management of emergency situations by those responsible. The work described is supported by the DIP (Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services) project. DIP (FP6 - 507483), an Integrated Project funded under the European Union's IST programme.