Subgroup 1 Collect interoperability requirements Define common, unified data model Engage tool &...

Subgroup 1• Collect interoperability requirements• Define common, unified data model• Engage tool & data providers, data consumers

Subgroup 2• Identify and catalog common observation types• Engage data providers and information managers

Subgroup 3• Define extension ontologies of scientific terms• Build on outputs of group 2• Engage range of domain scientists

Subgroup 4• Demonstrate interoperability across multiple systems• Define and prototype demonstration projects• Provide infrastructure to support other groups

Objectives of SONetBroad Objectives

Address semantic interoperability in environmental & earth sciences data [sharing, discovery, integration]

by building a network of practitioners (SONet), including domain & computer scientists, & information mgrs

to create generic, cross-disciplinary data interoperability solutions

Immediate Goals to Develop

• An extensible & open observations data model (“core model”) to unify domain-specific approaches

• A semantic (ontology) framework for scientific terminology and corresponding domain extensions

• Demonstration prototypes using the model and framework to address critical data interoperability issues

• Define and host Data Interoperability Challenge to test and refine above approaches

Community workshops … to bring together project members, data managers, domain scientists, computer scientists, and members

of the larger environmental informatics community

• Workshop 1: Collect detailed requirements and use cases to frame a “Scientific Observations Interoperability Challenge”; begin defining core model (held Oct, 2009)

• Workshop 2: Discuss various data models in terms of addressing “Scientific Observations Interoperability Challenge”; refine core model (expected Summer, 2010)

• Workshop 3: Roll-out of operational prototype; early evaluation and feedback• Workshop 4: Training; further evaluative discussion, and plan SONet sustainability

Similarities among Observational Data Models

Prototype Architecture for Applying Semantic Annotation

Subgroup 1:Core Data Model for

Observations

Subgroup 2:Catalog of Common Field Observations

Subgroup 3:Scientist-Oriented Term Organization

Subgroup 4:Demonstration

Projects

Core SONetTeam

ID# IN51B-1046 SONet: Towards a Shared Model for Earth Science ObservationsM. Schildhauer*1, H. Cao1, S. Bowers2, M. Jones1, D.L. McGuinness3, L.E. Bermudez4

1. NCEAS, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 2. Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, USA

3. McGuinness Associates, Latham, NY, USA 4. Southeastern Universities Research Association, Washington DC, USA

* Contact: schild@nceas.ucsb.edu

Entity

Context (other Observation)

Characteristic

Observation

Standard

hasCharacteristichasMeasurement

ofEntity

hasContext

usesStandard

Protocol

usesProtocol

FeatureOfInterest

ObservationContext

ObservedProperty

OM_Observation

Result

carrierOfCharacteristic

forProperty

relatedContextObservation

hasResult

OM_Process

usesProcedure

Precision Value

hasPrecision

ofCharacteristic

hasValue

References:

[1] Shawn Bowers, Joshua S. Madin and Mark P. Schildhauer, A Conceptual Modeling Framework for Expressing Observational Data Semantics. In ER 2008, 41-54.

[2] OpenGIS observations and measurements encoding standard (O&M): http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/om

SEEK Extensible Observation Ontology (OBOE) [1]

OGC’s Observations and Measurements (O&M) [2]

Entity FeatureOfInterest

Characteristic ObservedProperty

Measurement OM_Observation

Protocol OM_Process

Result

Standard

Value

Precision

Context ObservationContext

Site Species Ind Wt …

GCE6 Picea Rubens 1 75.13 …

GCE6 Picea Rubens 2 179.81 …

GCE7 Picea Rubens 1 443.20 …

… … … … …

observation “o1”

entity “Point_Location”

measurement “m1” key yes

Characteristic “GCE_Local-Code”

Standard “Nominal”

observation “o2”

entity “Tree”

measurement “m2” key yes

Characteristic “SpeciesName”

Standard “TaxonomicName”

measurement “m3” key yes

Characteristic “Local-ID”

Standard “Nominal”

measurement “m4”

Characteristic “Mass”

Standard “Ratio”

context identifying yes “o1”

map “Site” to “m1”

map “Species” to “m2”

map “Ind” to “m3”

Map “Wt” to “m4”

observation “o1”

entity “Point_Location”

measurement “m1” key yes

Characteristic “GCE_Local-Code”

Standard “Nominal”

observation “o2”

entity “Tree”

measurement “m2” key yes

Characteristic “SpeciesName”

Standard “TaxonomicName”

measurement “m3” key yes

Characteristic “Local-ID”

Standard “Nominal”

measurement “m4”

Characteristic “Mass”

Standard “Ratio”

context identifying yes “o1”

map “Site” to “m1”

map “Species” to “m2”

map “Ind” to “m3”

Map “Wt” to “m4”

(b) Semantic annotation to dataset (a)

(a) Dataset

http://sonet.ecoinformatics.org Acknowledgements: NSF OCI INTEROP 0753144

Prototype Architecture

Productivity Mass Mass Unit

Kilogram

Biomass

usesStandard

Gram

is-a

Bio.EntityTree

Leaf LitterTree Leaf Wet Weight Dry Weight

ObservationObservation

MeasurementMeasurement

Site Species Ind Wt

GCE6 Picea Rubens 1 75.13

GCE6 Picea Rubens 2 179.81

GCE7 Picea Rubens 1 443.20

… … … …

Place Treat Plot LL

sth C 1 0.003

sth C 1 0.002

sth N 1 0.008

… … … …

Data

StructuralMetadata (e.g. EML)

<attribute id=“att.4”> <attributeName> Wt </attributeName></attribute>

<attribute id=“att.4”> <attributeName> LL </attributeName></attribute>

hasMeasurement hasMeasurement

0.001

Semantic Annotation(e.g. OBOE)

Domain-Specific Ontology

is-a is-ais-a

is-a is-a

has-part

has-part

hasCharac-teristic

is-a

part-of is-a has-multiplierusesBaseStandard

ofEntityofEntity

ofCharacteristic

usesStandard

usesStandard

ofCharacteristic

Measurement

ofFeature