Construction of Marine Vocabularies in the Marine Metadata Interoperability
Project
Luis Bermudez, John Graybeal, MBARI
Anthony Isenor, Defence R&D Canada
Roy Lowry, BODC
Dawn Wright, Oregon State
Oceans 2005 Washington D.C.
MMI
• The Marine Metadata Interoperability (MMI) initiative promotes the exchange, integration and use of marine data through enhanced data publishing, discovery, documentation and accessibility.
• Community effort.
MMI
• NSF for major initial funding.
• SURA, the Southeastern Universities
Research Association for major in-kind
support (sponsored by ONR, the Office of
Naval Research) .
• NOAA Coastal Services Center for bridge
funding.
Community Support
• Roy Lowry, BODC• Robert Arko, LDEO• Julie Bosch, NOAA• Ben Domenico, Unidata • Karen Stocks, SDSC• Steve Hankin, NOAA -
Ocean.US/DMAC
• Mark Musen, Stanford Univ• Michael Parke, Univ of
Hawaii• Lola Olsen, NASA Goddard• Bob Weller, WHOI• Dawn Wright, Oregon State
Univ
• John Graybeal, MBARI. PI• Philip Bogden, SURA/SCOOP
Steering Committee
Executive Committee
• Stephen Miller, Scripps• Francisco Chavez, MBARI
MMI
Number of pages requested per month
MMI as of Aug 2005• ~ 200 members.
• > 600 documents available.
• Is listed in first place in a Google search for "marine metadata”.
• 8 presentations in one year (e.g. DMAC, NEPTUNE DMAS, OBIS).
• 10 virtual tutorials given related to marine ontologies, tools and web services.
• One workshop “Advancing Domain Vocabularies” Aug. 2005, Boulder, CO.
• Tools: VINE, VOC2OWL, Ontology Web Services and application to query distributed repositories.
“One ocean”
Search for sea
water temperature
data Water Temperature
sea_water_temperature
TEMP
BODC
GCMD
CF
Only matches
Metadata Data
EML
ISO ADL
DCMI
FGDC
MARINE XML
GML
ADL
NetCDF
ASCIIContent
Protocol
ESMLOPenDAP
Rest
SOAPZ39.50
DFDL
Thredds
Community agreements
LAS
WxS
HTTP
HDF
TIF
JPEG
Controlled Vocabulary
• Formally managed, community-specific terminology that collectively represents a specialized vocabulary for a community. Benefits:– helps to avoid misspellings and avoid the
use of arbitrary words that cause inconsistencies,
– helps to solve semantic incompatibilities among distributed systems.
Controlled Vocabulary
• Two types:– Parameter Discovery Vocabulary (PDV)
• Use to guide the user to find data• Examples: GCMD, BODC Discovery, AGU
Index Terms
– Parameter Usage Vocabulary (PUV)• Use to tag the data collected• Examples: U.S. JGOFS, BODC, CF
Semantic Interoperability
• Distributed and heterogeneous systems are able to solve issues related to controlled vocabulary.
Framework to make marine vocabularies interoperable
• Identification
• Harmonization
• Alignment and mapping
• Publication
Identification
• Members of the MMI site add a reference to the site.
• Lists ([email protected]) or domain leaders identify the most relevant ones.
• About 60 vocabularies have been distinguished and are available in the site.
Harmonization
DTDDTD
Comma Comma Separated Separated
ValuesValues
HTMLHTML
Tab Tab Separated Separated
ValuesValues
Relational Relational DatabaseDatabase
XML/XSDXML/XSD
RDFRDF
OWLOWL
Web Ontology Language OWL
• 2003 World Wide Web Consortium recommendation to formally express ontologies.
• Based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
• Can be serialized in XML.• Supporting tools: JENA, Protégé, SWOOP,
Sesame, Pangloss, Kuwari, VINE, …
Classes and individuals
Parameter
beam1_velocity
wind_speed
beam2_echo_intensity
ClassLooks like a Real world objects
Individuals
beam1_velocity
wind_speed
beam2_echo_intensity
Properties
Minimum set of propertiesProperty OWL property
x:originalIDNote: it could be any namespace and any local name .
Three choices:dc:description, rdf:comment or x:descriptionNote: the last one could be any namespace and any local name .
Units
Unique identifier rdf:ID Original Unique identifier
Definition of the term
VOC2OWL
~ 60 ontologies are available at http://marinemetadata.org/ns
Alignment and mapping
• Main relations:– Same as (owl:sameAs)
• Inverse, symmetric and transitive
– Narrower Than (map:narrowerThan)• Transitive, Inverse of map:broaderThan)
– Broader Than (map:broaderThan)Transitive, Inverse of map:narrowerThan)
sameAs relation
“Advancing Domain Vocabularies”MMI workshop Aug 2005
Topic Direct
mappings Inferred mappings
Total mappings
Plant Pigments 405 1,022 1,427
PaCOOS 131 375 506
Waves 93 181 274
Currents 90 153 243
CTD 81 432 513
Habitats 23 37 60
Total 823 2,200 3,023
Community Agreements
“One ocean”
Search for sea
water temperature
data Water Temperature
sea_water_temperature
TEMP
BODC
GCMD
CF
Find all !
Acknowledgements
• NSF, SURA, ONR, NOAA
• Our community supporters...
• The many other key organizations working with us to address metadata interoperability issues:– OceanUS and regional IOOS systems– ORION and its related projects
Thank You
http://marinemetadata.org
http://mmi.mbari.org:9600/mmi2/search.jsp
Ask@ marinemetadata.org