Proposal of multilingual Proposal of multilingual thesaurus for geoinformational thesaurus for geoinformational support of crisis management support of crisis management

Petr Kubíček, Tomáš KáňaMasaryk University

Laboratory on Geoinformatics and Cartography

Project partnersProject partners

• Masaryk University – Faculty of Science, Geographical Institute,

Laboratory on Geoinformatics and Cartography• Petr Kubíček

– Faculty of Pedagogy, Department of German Language and Literature

• Tomáš Káňa

• Umweltbundesamt GmbH– Abteilung Internationale Zusammenarbeit

• Johannes Mayer, Rudolf Legat

Why Disaster Management?Why Disaster Management?

-„Disasters and catastrophic events don't care about the national borders!“

Project ObjectivesProject Objectives

• Crisis situations are of multidisciplinary nature-have to be managed in cooperation with different specialists

• Prepare a proposal of terminology unification, which would effectively facilitate communication related to prevention and management of crisis situations.

• Creation and provision of access to a multidisciplinary multilingual thesaurus.

• „Do not reinvent the wheel“

MEDSI and TEDMEDSI and TED

Mercure Environmental

Disaster Information

System

Project ActivitiesProject Activities

• Analysis of current status of crisis management terminology in the Czech Republic

• Relationship with emergency management authorities of the Czech Republic

• Joint workshop of TED team and the Masaryk University

• Proposal of joint project for creation of a functional model of internet portal „Multilingual thesaurus for geoinformational support of crisis management“

Project Impact and Co-operationProject Impact and Co-operation

The issue of crisis management and geoinformation is reflected in a wide range of project both on the national and European levels:

• INSPIRE (http://inspire.jrc.it/home.html)

• MEDSI (http://www.medsi.org) • GEOLAND (http://www.geoland.at) • Portal of the Public Administration Map

Services (http://geoportal.cenia.cz/mapmaker/ceu/portal)

Thesaurus and Linguistic Thesaurus and Linguistic BackgroundBackground

• Thesaurus – lexical meaning– New Latin for “treasure”, means “treasure of

words”– specific dictionary– tries to reflect mental dictionary– links words

• Kinds of Thesauri– general Thesauri include vocabulary of the

common language– specific Thesauri include vocabulary of

• common language• specific field (such as Biology, History, Enviroment...)

Structure of ThesauriStructure of Thesauri• Mental lexicon:

– Words have their meanings.– Every human being has its own imagination of that

meaning.– Aim of a Thesaurus – help to coordinate this subjective

meaning

• Structure of the mental lexicon:– Every word is a part of the lexical system of a language

and stands in relations to other words: • superordinate terms – broader term• subordinate Terms – narrower term• related Term:

– same meaning (quite rare)– almost the same meaning – opposite meanig

Use examples as you please!

Interoperable Geoinformation Interoperable Geoinformation and Emergency Managementand Emergency Management

(Geo)-Information Mining(Geo)-Information Mining

Data VisualizationData Visualization

Semantic Network ServicesSemantic Network Services

1. a thesaurus of environmental terms (UmThes®, German source of GEMET)

2. a gazetteer including the intersections between geographical objects of all kinds (EuroGeonames, GN250, includes UN LOCODE);

3. a chronology of historical and contemporary events that have affected the environment.

Bi-lingual German/English

Before SNS, these were three distinct ontologies.

Thesaurus ConceptThesaurus Concept

TermTerm

ComponentComponent

preferredpreferred

broaderbroader

compositecomposite

relatedrelated

SynonymSynonym

DescriptorDescriptor

Morphology

as implemented in UmThes®

ISO 2788/5964

The Gazetteer ModelThe Gazetteer Model

GeoObjectGeoObject

intersectsintersects

Names Morphology

part ofpart of

Types / Layers

Coordinates

addressed by Open GIS Consortium (OGC)

ChronologyChronology

EventEvent

sequencesequence

Names Morphology

relatedrelated

Types

Temporal Extent

Integration in a Topic MapIntegration in a Topic Map

DescriptorDescriptor

TopicTopic

EventEvent LocationLocation

AccidentAccident CommunityCommunity

NationNation

Nuclear AccidentChernobyl

radiation disaster1986-04-26

Chernobyl

ex. USSR

situated inbroader

wherewhat

Nuclear Energy

occurrence

www.chernobyl.com/

Ukraine

ThesaurusThesaurus

topic typetopicassociation

DirectionsDirections

• 7th FP• eContentplus• INSPIRE• Public Sector Information (PSI) – metadata• Water Framework Dicetive (WFD)