Formalizing Geological Knowledge through Ontologies and Semantic Annotation

The paper addresses the problem of integrating various applications related to geological interpretation within an integrated workflow. This supposes the exchange of different types of objects related to several knowledge fields (seismic, stratigraphy, structural geology), represented in various formats. The solution that we propose consists in linking specialized ontologies describing the different fields knowledge to a pivot ontology related to basic geological knowledge. The linkage between these ontologies and the earth modelling applications can be operated thanks to the semantic annotation technology. The paper presents some key-elements of this pivot ontology and gives an outline of the semantic annotation methodology, studied as a possible solution for modelling workflow integration.