Formalizing the semantics of sea ice

We have initiated a project aimed at enhancing interdisciplinary understanding and usability of polar data by diverse communities. We have produced computer- and human-understandable models of sea ice that can be used to support the interoperability of a wide range of sea ice data. This has the pote...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth science informatics 2015-03, Vol.8 (1), p.51-62
Main Authors: Duerr, Ruth E., McCusker, Jamie P., Parsons, Mark A., Khalsa, SiriJodha Singh, Pulsifer, Peter L., Thompson, Cassidy, Yan, Rui, McGuinness, Deborah L., Fox, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charts
Communities
Earth Sciences
Earth System Sciences
Freeware
Ice
Indigenous peoples
Information Systems Applications (incl. Internet)
Interoperability
Mathematical models
Modelling
Oceanography
Ontology
Physical properties
Research Article
Scientists
Sea ice
Sea ice data
Semantics
Simulation and Modeling
Space Exploration and Astronautics
Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics
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Summary:We have initiated a project aimed at enhancing interdisciplinary understanding and usability of polar data by diverse communities. We have produced computer- and human-understandable models of sea ice that can be used to support the interoperability of a wide range of sea ice data. This has the potential to improve scientific predictive analyses and increase usage of the data by scientists, modelers, and forecasters as well as residents of communities that rely on sea ice. We have developed a family of ontologies, leveraging existing best in class models, including one module describing physical characteristics of sea ice, another describing sea ice charts, and a third modeling “egg codes” - an internationally accepted standard for symbolically representing sea ice within geographic regions. We used a semantic Web methodology to rapidly gather and refine requirements, design and iterate over the ontologies, and to evaluate the ontologies with respect to the use cases. We gathered requirements from a wide range of potential stakeholders reflecting the interests of operational ice centers, ice researchers, and indigenous people. We introduce the driving use case and provide an overview of the resulting open source ontologies. We also introduce some key technical considerations including the prominent role of provenance, terms of use, and credit in the model. We describe how the ontologies are being employed and highlight their compatibility with a wide range of existing standards previously developed by many of the stakeholder communities.
ISSN:1865-0473
1865-0481
DOI:10.1007/s12145-014-0177-z