Resumen en español

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are incorporated in the companies to facilitate spatial analysis of the information. This analysis often requires the integration of GIS heterogeneous data to interoperate. In GIS, interoperability is mainly addressed by the specification of standards and the implementation of several mechanisms like ontologies, web services, grid computing, and middleware technologies. In order to implement any of such mechanisms, an analyst should make a detailed and iterative study of the GIS domain for every situation of interoperability is needed. Such study is, commonly, subjective and highly dependent on the analyst experience. Consequently, the entire process seems not to be transparent and traceable. For this reason, in this paper we propose an interoperability method for generalizing the analysis phase of the GIS domain. The method comprises seven steps supported by analysis patterns expressed in pre-conceptual schemas. The method can be integrated with the aforementioned mechanisms for interoperability, thus shortening the analysis phase and providing a communication channel between the user, the analyst, and the developer.