Formal measures for semantic interoperability assessment in cooperative enterprise information systems

The growing complexity of modern organisations poses a series of challenges, among them the cooperation between autonomous and heterogeneous information systems in distributed networks. Actually, information systems (IS) are said to be cooperative if they share common goals in their environment and jointly contribute to achieve these common goals. Obviously, this presupposes the ability to exchange information and then to use it in accordance with each information system required. In the literature, these features refer to interoperability. In this context, one of the main issues concerns the evaluation of the lack of interoperability between Cooperative Information Systems (CIS) through the measurement of their semantic gaps. In order to achieve this purpose, this paper proposes a mathematical formalisation of the semantic relationships between CIS conceptual models. The resulting formal model is then analysed for evaluating the lack of interoperability implications to the global information systems shared goals. The proposed approach is illustrated through a case study dealing with a B2M (Business to Manufacturing) interoperability requirement between an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) application.

► In this paper, we study semantic interoperability assessment in Cooperative Information Systems (CISs).
► The work is based on semantics enactment, basically applied for CISs conceptual models.
► We propose a mathematical formalisation of the semantic relationships between CISs conceptual models.
► We developed formal measures based on the elaborated semantic relationships.
► An interoperability measures map identifies the semantic gap and evaluates actions to be taken for improving the effective interoperation.