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From fisheries studies to biodiversity data sharing
Last modified: 2011-10-12
Abstract
In addition to target species, Ecosystemic approach to Fisheries (EAF) aims to take into account other ecosystem components related to them from an ecological point of view (their preys, seamounts..). Additional information resources are needed to make this new approach effective. Data sharing and then interoperability is a key point required at the beginning of the process. This is a presentation of our ongoing work on interoperability to make tuna fisheries data available for different kinds of users studying marine ecology. Our first goal is to facilitate datasets discovery and then, by implementing different data formats and related access protocols, make them understandable and usable by different communities. We choosed standards sets relevant for different communities of users geospatial data (Open Geospatial Consortium, OGC), biodiversity data (TDWG).
A new application made of different components has been set up to do so. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) has been used to connect some of our datasets to the GBIF. Other applications are used to serve this data through OGC data formats and related protocols (like Web Map Service, WMS, or Web Feature Service, WFS). So far, hundreds of thousands of observations of marine species have been described and much more are going to be connected.
Moreover, the ability to describe, manage and serve our data by mapping their content with these standards requires the management of semantic issues. Our new system is thus driven by an ontology (using Web Semantic languages related to semantic Web activity of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C), which enables to summarize and manage both knowledge and data on ecosystems related to tropical tuna. This knowledge base is made accessible through a Web portal (http://www.ecoscope.org) and can be used to visualize relationships between components of these ecosystems (like foodwebs). The underlying ontology can be used as a semantic agent to convert terms, referential codes according to the standards and user's profile (for example the translation of our own taxonomy codes into Worms codes, World Register of Marine Species).
A new application made of different components has been set up to do so. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) has been used to connect some of our datasets to the GBIF. Other applications are used to serve this data through OGC data formats and related protocols (like Web Map Service, WMS, or Web Feature Service, WFS). So far, hundreds of thousands of observations of marine species have been described and much more are going to be connected.
Moreover, the ability to describe, manage and serve our data by mapping their content with these standards requires the management of semantic issues. Our new system is thus driven by an ontology (using Web Semantic languages related to semantic Web activity of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C), which enables to summarize and manage both knowledge and data on ecosystems related to tropical tuna. This knowledge base is made accessible through a Web portal (http://www.ecoscope.org) and can be used to visualize relationships between components of these ecosystems (like foodwebs). The underlying ontology can be used as a semantic agent to convert terms, referential codes according to the standards and user's profile (for example the translation of our own taxonomy codes into Worms codes, World Register of Marine Species).