Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: America del Nord (Theatre I)
Date: 2013-11-01 09:30 AM – 09:45 AM
Last modified: 2013-10-08
Abstract
Nowadays, the exploitation of biodiversity data is very difficult, because current databanks are multi-observer, multi-area, multi-site, with multiple underlying data models. While correct data annotation is a prerequisite to data integration, most data producers still see it as a time consuming chore.
The importance of shared controlled vocabularies to address the issue of data heterogeneity, in order to unify data models and describe metadata, has been amply demonstrated [1]. Recent works, describe many tools that offer collaborative editing and online sharing of controlled vocabularies [2, 3, 4]. Among them, Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) supports vocabulary creation, linking, and maintenance [5]. Its adoption by the community appears to be strong [6].
However a crucial point still remains to be addressed: ensuring the adoption and re-use of these vocabularies by all the domain stakeholders, including fieldworkers, whose concerns are far from data interoperability.
To address these vocabulary adoptions issues, our software aims to make it easy to annotate biodiversity datasets, while painlessly connecting existing controlled vocabularies. Developed as an extension of SMW, this tool will offer the possibility to connect an existing vocabulary, a subset of concepts, or a branch from a SMW vocabulary management system.[1] Bermudez, L., Montgomery, E., Miller, S.P., Neiswender, C., Isenor, A. (2011), "The Importance of Controlled Vocabularies." In The MMI Guides: Navigating the World of Marine Metadata.
[2] Baskauf, S., Ó Tuama, É., Endresen, D. & Hagedorn, G. (2013), TDWG Vocabulary Management Task Group. Report of the TDWG Vocabulary Management Task Group (VoMaG).
[3] Laporte M.A., Mougenot I., Garnier E. (2012) ThesauForm - Traits: A web based collaborative tool to develop a thesaurus for plant functional diversity research. Ecological Informatics 11: 34-44/
[4] Matteis L., Chibon P.Y., Espinosa H., Skofic M., Finkers R., Bruskiewich R., Hyman G., Arnaud E. (2013) Crop Ontology: Vocabulary For Crop-related Concepts, The First International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity, Montpellier, France.
[5] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/
[6] Q Zou, Wei Fan (2009), A semantic MediaWiki-empowered terminology registry. Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata