Achieving Interoperability at Semantic Level

Developing and operating Space Systems involves complex activities, involving many parties distributed in location and time. This development requires efficient and effective interoperability during the overall Space System development and operations lifecycle.

Interoperability is often described from a syntactic viewpoint, focusing on data exchange formats. While syntactic interoperability is required, the prerequisite for any successful information exchange is to ensure that all actors involved share a common understanding of the information that will be exchanged. This aspect of interoperability is known as semantic interoperability. Semantic interoperability focusses on “what” is being exchanged, while syntactic interoperability focuses on “how” it is being exchanged.

The need for semantic interoperability is described in [1], which is developed by the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS). In this technical memorandum, the concept of a “global conceptual data model” as a means to achieve the required semantic interoperability is introduced. Factbased modelling is introduced as the means to develop a global conceptual data model.

In this paper, we address the issues of semantic interoperability and describe the developments on-going at the European Space Agency (ESA) for fully supporting semantic interoperability.