is an “artefact with a set of functionalities and components which are adequate to the Web context” (Lima, 2003, p. 10), that is, it is a software with specific proprieties which are inseparable from the Web environment and that we do not find in traditional software products. Therefore, it may be considered an information system in which a great amount of volatile data – highly semi-structured and structured, semantically enriched and located in Web-servers – are consulted, processed and updated by information navigators which are designed according to patterns of usability, adaptability, ergonomics, accessibility and autonomy.
Published in Chapter:
The Semantic Web in Tourism
Salvador Miranda Lima (Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão, Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Portugal) and José Moreira (IEETA / DETI, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 29
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-650-1.ch033
Abstract
The emergence of the World Wide Web made available massive amounts of data. This data, created and disseminated from many different sources, is prepared and linked in a way that is well-suited for display purposes, but automation, integration, interoperability or context-oriented search can hardly be implemented. Hence, the Semantic Web aims at promoting global information integration and semantic interoperability, through the use of metadata, ontologies and inference mechanisms. This chapter presents a Semantic Model for Tourism (SeMoT), designed for building Semantic Web enabled applications for the planning and management of touristic itineraries, taking into account the new requirements of more demanding and culturally evolved tourists. It includes an introduction to relevant tourism concepts, an overview of current trends in Web Semantics research and a presentation of the architecture, main features and a selection of representative ontologies that compose the SeMoT.