HydroTagger: A Tool for Semantic Mapping of Hydrologic Terms

Semantic heterogeneity is a common problem when trying to unify information from disparate data systems. In order to overcome these heterogeneities it is generally understood that no one system or convention is the best, rather that mechanisms need to be implemented in which researchers can both agree on terms or keywords used and also the establishment of a keyword structure so their relationship to each other are known. This paper introduces an application developed for the hydrologic community that allows viewing and editing of the underlying keyword ontology without the need for specific knowledge of ontology editors like Protégé and also permitting the tagging of individual variable names to its relevant search keywords to support another application (HydroSeek). The underlying keyword ontology is a concept ontology that is used a base for searching for hydrologic data across various data sources.