Herbert Schentz1, Kathi Schleidt1 & Mandy Lane2
1 umweltbundesamt (Austrian Federal Environment Agency), Spittelauer Lände 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
2 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg, Lancaster, LA1 4AP. UK
ALTER-Net is a "Network of Excellence" funded by the EU's 6th Framework Programme with the goal of creating a European long-term interdisciplinary facility for research on the complex relationship between ecosystems, biodiversity and society. Within this NoE, we are involved in WP I6 which has the task of constructing a framework within which can be built a system to manage biodiversity data, information and knowledge from the NoE.
In order to complete this task, we have done a survey of user requirements as well as existing systems. Based on this information, we have formulated our vision of an ideal architecture for such a network. This ideal architecture should be based on an object oriented DATA Structure. This means that there are classes, instances (of classes) and relations between them (classes as well as instances). Additionally, it should be possible to derive or inherit new data types from existing ones. This type of structure for data management is also referred to as an ontology.
In such an ontology, metadata and data are all represented in the same object oriented data structure, thus removing the artificial divide between metadata and data. “One mans metadata may easily another mans data (and vice versa)”.
One important concept in the creation of ontologies is that, while instances may be created independently by the network partners, the creation of classes requires a commitment by the community members. Once the necessary classes have been defined, partial ontologies dealing with individual topic areas can be created and maintained independently. Some topics of partial ontologies are:
· Taxonomic lists (species, vegetation types, soil types…)
· Lists of political administration unites (as references)
· Topologic (geographic) data
· Literature citations
· Socio economic data. (Crop yields…)
Although the initial effort required for the creation of these partial ontologies is fairly large, on the long run it would save a great deal of time as ‘metadata’ need no longer be entered individually for each record being marked-up but instead can be linked by reference to existing objects in the partial ontologies.