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 (ont@marinemetadata.org) 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