NBII Ecoinformatics Technical

Working Group

Gladys Cotter

Mike Frame

Ispra, Italy

January 2006

Why are Data Standards Important?

Facilitate discovery of information

Allow for information exchange

Enhance information management

text

Describe and Discover

www.NBII.gov

PORTAL

My.NBII.gov

Content Management Integrated/Federated SearchCollaboration Services

Database and Web Services Model ServicesGeospatial Services

ITIS DIGR CatalogThesaurus Mapping Geoparsing CatalogGeo -

referencingDiscovery CatalogOperations

Dublin Core (plus)

UDDI / WSDL ??OGC/ISO FGDC/ISO

Distributed Applications , Databases , Websites , Tools and Models

Consume

Integrated View

DistributedServices

Resource and Service Catalogs

DistributedResources

Resource Catalog

Geospatial Services Catalog

Geospatial Dataset

Resource Clearinghouse

Database and Web Services

Catalog

Model ServicesCatalog

Services Overview

CSA/NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus

Provides us with a common language to describe the scope and content of all resources in NBII system

Using a common language to characterize these resources facilitates their retrieval by users

Created as an NBII partnership with Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)

Five (5) existing thesauri combined into one Biocomplexity Thesaurus

Biocomplexity Thesaurus: Using a Controlled Vocabulary

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov

Latest Thesaurus Developments

• Thesaurus Web service developed by ORNL; released to the public on thesaurus.nbii.gov in Spring 2005

• Thesaurus maintenance ongoing

•Evaluating ~750 terms suggested by nodes for inclusion in the Biocomplexity

•2005-2006 focus:

•Adding ~3000 terms for fire ecology and management to support FRAMES and nodes addressing fire issues

•Joint web-service with EPA/EU Ecoinformatics

NBII & EIONET Joint Project

Project Background Project “birthed” at the DC Ecoinformatics

meeting in May 2005 Goals

• Identify specific collaborative efforts beneficial to everyone

• Improve access to environmental information• Leverage expertise of participants • Begin to address the multi-lingual challenges• Develop a “working tool”

Current Capabilities

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov/SearchNBIIThesaurus/

Current Capabilities - NBII

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov/SearchNBIIThesaurus/

“endangered species”

Current Capabilities - EIONET

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov/SearchNBIIThesaurus/

“endangered species”

Challenges Thesaurus scope, intent, purpose, and

coverage is different • NBII = sub-discipline of environment

• Endangered species• Broader Terms:Species , Special status species ,

Taxa

• EIOINET = broad environment• Broader Terms:environmental protection

Potential areas to pursue - thesaurus

Pulling results from both sources simultaneously

Addressing “scope” and level issues Deploying to a test audience Implementing within cataloging tools Implementing within querying tools

Joint SPIRE Activities

Joint SPIRE Activities

• Research project in the area of Invasive species

Water hyacinth clogging the Ortega River (Photo: Don Schmitz

Additional Areas Web-services

• Registries• Deployment

Geospatial Standards (OGIS) SPIRE activities

Questions, Comments,

Take A look at the site:

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov

Give us feedback on Search::

http://www.nbii.gov/search/search.html

What is SKOS Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) Sponsored by the WC3 Specifications and standards to support the use of

thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary within the framework of the semantic web.

An application of RDF

USGS Research Needs Semantic Searching and Analysis Distributed modeling

• Consuming data• Model reuse• Modeling standards for sharing

Mini/multi thesaurus applications

USGS Research Needs – continued

Geospatial technologies• Gazetteer aided searching• Geo-parsing of data• Semantic models for species analysis• Adoption & intersection of registries

NBII Search Activities

NBII BioBot Features

NBII BioBot Features •Simple single search box interface

•All relevant resources are returned (user doesn’t have to know what where the resource comes from or what type of resource it is)

• i.e. If the resource is housed at a university, federal agencies or if the resource contains to a mapping application, data set, teacher lesson plan, etc.

•Tabbed interface allows users to view “All” results by default, or select on specific resource types (i.e. Maps, Images, Journal articles, etc.)

• Scientifically creditable resources cataloged and identified by NBII partners using the Dublin Core standard are “weighted” higher than any crawled/harvested resource found on the internet.

•Controlled Subjects, species names, place names given highest weights; Title, Creator, Publisher, and Description also weighted

•NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus operating in background to supplement user search terms with synonymous terms thereby not requiring the user to know all of the variations of a term.

NBII Search: with & without

Example: “alien species”

Google and NBII BioBot

Google and NBII

Summary•Google’s mission: Make the entire Web universe findable

•Google cannot interpret context of a user’s search

•What a document contains

•Google’s ranking algorithm is based upon inbound links; resources more often linked to are ranked higher

•NBII’s mission: Make the biological Web findable

•NBII interprets context with metadata (subject, taxonomic, geographic)

•What a document is about

•NBII’s ranking algorithm is based upon weightings of metadata fields, and weighting of “Reliable/High Quality/Trusted sources

Questions, Comments,

Take A look at the site:

http://thesaurus.nbii.gov

Give us feedback on Search::

http://www.nbii.gov/search/search.html