An ontology driven approach to increase METOC effectiveness

Abstract

Meteorological and Oceanographic (METOC) systems that support the needs of the warfighter often involve configuring support for querying dispersed METOC data. The Joint METOC Broker Language (JMBL) has been established as the interface to query METOC data sources for machine to machine communication. To cover a wide spectrum of data needs, the JMBL standard has grown in complexity. This complexity leads to very few end users understanding the necessary elements to access many of the data types supported by JMBL. A solution commonly used requires developing graphical user interfaces (GUI) for a specific family of data requests. As the end user's needs evolve to include new data types, the GUI must be redeveloped to include the ability to access this new information. This inefficient cycle confines the capacity and flexibility of those who support the warfighter, and presents a bottleneck that devalues the data itself.