On the visualization of semantic-based mappings

Abstract

The popularity of the semantic web in many domains, such as transportation, has led to an ever-increasing development of standards, vocabularies, and ontologies, which generates problems of heterogeneity and lack of interoperability. To address this issue, a large body of research focused on providing various mapping tools and techniques to translate data from one standard to another to foster smooth communication among them. While valuable advancements in mapping techniques have been achieved so far, the explainability and usability of such tools have been overlooked. Since explainability of software is being recognized as a crucial non-functional requirement for complex systems, the development of self-explaining and user-friendly graphical interfaces is becoming a pressing need. In this paper we present S2SMaT, our contribution to the problem of visualization of mappings. The tool helps users easily navigate the structure of standards, understand the suggested mappings between their terms, and in general more easily interact with the system.