IC_10 Domain extension of existing thesauri
Contents
Background[edit]
Short description[edit]
The multilingual SKOS/RDF thesaurus EnvThes integrates important terms used in long term ecological monitoring, research and experiments. It is based on US LTER Controlled Vocabulary, and has been extended by QDTY units and dimensions, EUNIS Habitats, INSPIRE spatial data themes and special concepts, needed by the EnvEurope and ExpeER communities. It links to other existing thesauri and vocabularies like GEMET, EARth, AgroVoc, EuroVoc and Wikipedia, EEA vocabularies. In this implementation case we want to extend EnvThes for the marine domain. Possible inputs can come from LifeWatch Italy, whose Interactions Thematic Centre developed a Phytoplankton Traits Thesaurus and is working on the Fish, Macrozoobenthos and Microzooplankton Traits Thesauri. Other RIs such as SeaDataNet, EMBRC could contribute to this extension as they are interested in linking with the biological community.
Contact[edit]
| Background | Contact Person | Organization | Contact email | |
| _ICT | e-Infrastructure]_ | Barbara Magagna | Umweltbundesamt GmbH | Barbara.magagna@umweltbundesamt.at |
Use case type[edit]
Implementation case
Scientific domain and communities[edit]
Scientific domain
[Atmosphere | Biosphere | hydrosphere | geosphere] – all of them
Community
Data Publication/Data Service Provision
Behavior
Semantic Harmonisation/Data Discovery and Access and Service Description/ServiceRegistration
Role:
Semantic Service Provider
Detailed description[edit]
Objective and Impact
Set steps to harmonize the conceptual worlds of the different RI thus enhancing semantic interoperability, a precondition for sharing metadata and data.
Challenges
(1) Synonyms and exact matching terms: how to harmonize contradicting conceptual approaches in different communities
(2) How to completely detect homonyms
(3) How to deal with contradicting views of different communities.
Detailed scenarios
tbd
Technical status and requirements
EnvThes is an existing thesaurus used by the ecological monitoring and experimental communities (LTER, ANAEE) . It is based SKOS/RDF and is implemented using Topbraid thesaurus server with a Browser user interface, linkedData interface and SPARQL endpoint.
The technical status of the other vocabularies has to be evaluated (see below)
In case other formal languages than SKOS/RDF are used, translating machines will be needed.
Implementation plan and timetable
1) timeline: tbd
2) milestones:
(1) Find vocabularies that shall be integrated
(2) Analyze formal language of found vocabularies (e.g. SKOS/RDF ) and related services. (e.g. SPARQL endpoint)
(3) Automatically search for matching strings
(4) Manually revise the concepts that have been found automatically in the different communities
(5) Develop a decision guidance across RIs
(6) Depending on organizational decisions establish links between vocabularies, and/or import concepts to vocabularies
3) involved RIs: LTER, EMBRC, LifeWatch Italy,…
4) links to ENVRIPlus work packages / tasks: 5.3, 8.2, 8.3
5) allocation of resources: tbd
Expected output and evaluation of output
- Links between concepts in different vocabularies
- Eventually merged vocabularies
