© NERC All rights reserved BGS Linked Data Pilot – aims & objectives DNF Expert Group Meeting...

© NERC All rights reserved

BGS Linked Data Pilot – aims & objectives

DNF Expert Group Meeting

London, 18/11/10

John Laxton


We are not experts on linked data – the aim of the pilot is to learn!!

The pilot will run through this winter – about to start


Outline of talk

• Background – where we are now with web dissemination

• What are the outstanding problems?

• How we think Linked Data might help

• What we hope to do in the pilot project


Background – where are we now with web dissemination?

We have developed an international standard for geoscience data interoperability - GeoSciML

• based on a conceptual model of geoscientific information drawing on existing data models implemented in UML

• implemented an XML/GML encoding of the model subset

• identified areas that require standardised classifications in order to enable interchange


GA (Australia)

CSIRO (Australia)

VGS (Australia)

BRGM (France)

GSC (Canada)

SGU (Sweden)

USGS (USA)

AZGS (USA)

BGS (UK)

GSJ (Japan)

APAT (Italy)

Who is involved?


• Geologic Feature (inc Mapped Feature)• Geologic Unit• Earth Material (lithology)• Geologic Structure• Fossil• Geologic Age• Boreholes & Observations• Geologic Relation• CGI Values• Vocabulary• Metadata• Collection

Data Model Packages


Geologic Unit


Vocabularies are being developed to enable semantic

interoperability


• Composition part proportion terms • Compound material genesis terms• Constituent part role terms• Composition Category terms• Consolidation degree terms• Contact character terms• Convention codes for planar orientation

specification• Description purpose terms• Determination method terms for

orientation measurements• Earth Material colour terms • Fabric terms• Fault movement sense terms • Fault movement type terms• Feature observation method terms • Geologic contact type terms• Geologic event environment category

terms• Geologic event process category terms• Geologic relationship role type terms• Geologic unit body morphology terms• Geologic unit exposure colour terms• Geologic unit type

• Geologic unit outcrop character• Lithology categories for Geologic

unit composition • Mapped feature observation

method terms• Metamorphic grade terms • Metamorphic facies terms• Named time ordinal era terms• Particle aspect ratio terms• Particle size terms• Particle sorting terms• Particle shape terms• Particle type terms• Quantity value qualifier• SimpleLithology• Stratified unit bedding pattern

terms• Stratified unit bedding style terms• Stratified unit bedding thickness

terms• Stratigraphic rank terms• Vocabulary relationship role terms

Vocabulary topics


But this is still only semantic interoperability within the

geoscientific community……


But the vocabularies are in SKOS:

which enables…….


GeoSciML was tested and applied in the eContent-Plus

OneGeology-Europe project


• to bring together a web-accessible, interoperable geological spatial dataset for the whole of Europe at 1:1 million scale

• to develop a harmonised specification for basic geological map data and make significant progress towards harmonising the dataset

• to accelerate the development and deployment of GeoSciML

• to facilitate re-use and addition of value by a wide spectrum of users and identify, document and disseminate strategies for the reduction of technical and business barriers to re-use

• to address the multilingual aspects of access through a multilingual discovery portal

• to move geological knowledge closer to the end-user• To contribute to INSPIRE

Objectives of OneGeology-Europe


OneGeology-Europe and INSPIRE

• One of the objectives of OneGeology-Europe was to ‘contribute to INSPIRE’

• Tried to use implementing rules as much as possible

• GeoSciML now being used as the basis for the INSPIRE Geology data specification


This will lead to GeoSciML conformant web services, possibly using common

vocabularies, across Europe. Problem solved?


Outstanding Problems

• Mapping from ‘internal’ concepts to common ones is very time consuming and can involve significant loss of semantic resolution – experience from OneGeology-Europe

• All of this is still geologists talking to geologists!


We want to….

• make our information much more widely used and useable (semantic publishing)

• make our domain knowledge available

• be able to integrate information from other domains more readily with our information

• enable non-geoscientists to query our information, and receive answers, using language from their own domain.

• be able to link similar, but not identical, concepts


Can Linked Data and the Semantic Web help with this?


There is some useful stuff out there….


Small Pilot Project to…

• Learn about Linked Data through ‘doing’

• Investigate potential of Linked Data – does it live up to claims?

• Demonstrate potential to BGS Management

• What do we need to do to implement Linked Data properly?


Pilot Project will aim to…

• Add standard URIs to some vocabulary concepts and related data items (eg geology map polygons)

• Create a small ontology in OWL/RDF linking concepts in our vocabularies to concepts in SWEET Geology

• Make use of the existing mapping between concepts in SWEET ontologies from different domains

• Construct some SPARQL queries using concepts in non-geology domains to query geological data


We hope to find out….

• How much effort is involved in building ontologies?

• Can you really construct a Linked Data web without a specific question in mind?

• Could we build ontologies to link to INSPIRE codelists/vocabularies?

• Can we create useful SPARQL queries?

• What do we need to do to fill the gaps and is it practical?

• A roadmap for the way forward (which will depend on what the wider UK spatial data community does)


Questions (or answers)?

© NERC All rights reserved BGS Linked Data Pilot – aims & objectives DNF Expert Group Meeting...

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