Scientific Concepts Working Group

Overview

The goal of this working group is to define ontology extensions to the SONet core data model for organizing observations according to scientifically meaningful concepts (e.g., ecological community, sedimentation, biological invasion, etc.). This working group will initially be focused on developing relevant concept hierarchies for classifying the specific observation types identified by the Observations Catalog Working Group. 

The ontologies created will be designed with specific applications in mind. Examples include providing (1) meaningful navigation hierarchies to scientists for finding and organizing relevant observation data, (2) improved data discovery and search capabilities, and (3) unified terminologies and semantic relationships for use in data integration. Another major task of this subgroup will be to compare and contrast existing ontology approaches for organizing scientific concepts and for representing abstract knowledge, with the goal of creating more flexible organizations that can accommodate a wide range of scientific observations. 

Working Group Members

• Mark Schildhauer, NCEAS
• Joshua Madin, Macquarie University

Collaboration Tools

• Scientific Concepts Forum

Technical Documents

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Systems and Prototypes

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