Sharing Ontology in Complex Scenario using a Peer-To-Peer Approach

The problem of defining efficient techniques for knowledge representation (KR) is becoming more and more a challenging topic in both academic and industrial community. The Semantic Web needs of formal knowledge representations for implementing useful services and put in common the different views between man and machines. In this framework, we assume that new approaches for knowledge definition and representation may be useful, in particular the ones based on the concept of ontology. We chose the issue of landscape planning as a case study, particularly focusing on cultural landscape. This choice was motivated by cultural and scientific innovations, which led in recent years to a completely new interpretation of landscape making it a high complex scenario. Based on these considerations, we propose a suitable ontology-based model and implement it in a system designed to manage ontologies using a peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm to share general and domain knowledge. The network knowledge is exposed using a Web Service and it can be used by intelligent Web agents.