SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Semantic Network Services Dr. Maria Rüther Umweltbundesamt, Berlin Thomas Bandholtz, Consultant

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Shared vocabulary 1.a thesaurus of currently 39,143 environmental terms (UmThes ®, German source of GEMET). Language: German – English 2.a gazetteer including the intersections between 48,213 geographical objects of all kinds. Language: German 3.a chronology of historical and contemporary events that have affected the environment, currently 593 events. Language: German - English Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Thesa. Component preferred broader composite related Synonym Descriptor Morphology Location intersects Morphology part of Types / Layers Coordinates Event sequence Morphology related Types Temp. Extent Integration in a Topic Map Topic what where Associations between events, places names and descriptions Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April An Example for associations Descriptor Topic Event Location Conference Community Nation climate convention First UNFCC Conference, Berlin 3/28/ /7/1995 Berlin Deutschland situated in broader where what International convention occurrences Thesaurus Topic class Topic instance Association Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Accessing the topics by Web Services SNS offers 3 services findTopics searches the Topic Map for topics matching the given parameters. The result is a flat list of matching topics, but no associations. autoClassify provides automatic indexing. The text to be indexed can be passed by a character constant (document) or by web address (url). The result is a list of significant topics that classify the document. getPSI (PSI= „Published Subject Identifier“) provides terminology reference by web address (url). The result is a tree of associated topics. Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April ready for use: Developer Toolkit & Documentation gein® and GeoMIS.Bun d are using these Web Services Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April What comes next......possible Other applications integrate the SNS services SNS extends the vocabulary for new users SNS provides its technology for new services

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April sns End of regular presentation Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April How to reference a Thesaurus in ISO What will return? - a human-readable web page? -XML encoded description? OGC Catalog Services ISO geographic Metadata ISO XML Schema Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April XML Formats for Thesaurus GEMET XML format – no Schema, no DTD – no standard ! SKOS-Core 1.0 RDF Schema by SWAD Europe Thesaurus Activity (W3C + IST) The ADL Thesaurus Protocol (Alexandria Digital Library) Zthes: a Z39.50 Profile for Thesaurus Navigation or more general: XTM: XML Topic Map (ISO 13250) Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Technical platform used by SNS Oracle Database J2EE Architecture Open Source (Tomcat, Cocoon) Web Services (W3C Web Service Activity) XML Interchange format: XTM 1.0 (XML Topic Maps, ISO/IEC 13250) Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Searching the topics:

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Öffentliche Umweltinformation im Web* To the Topic Map * EU-Umwelt- informations- richtlinie, Novellierung dt. Umwelt- informations- gesetz Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April Erweiterung der Topic Map Thesa. Location Topic Event „Microthesauri“ Indicators Methods Substances region Actors Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April SNS Alpenkonvention Datenbanken im UBA, integrierte Umweltbeobachtung Neu: Koordinierungsstelle UDK/gein … einzelne Länder … GEMET, Twinning-Projekte GeoMis.Bund Umweltbundesamt

SNS – Semantic Network Service Environmental Thesaurus/Terminology Workshop, Geneva April R&D Project May 2001 – December 2002 „Development of a Semantic Network Service for the German Environmental Information Network (gein®)“ (UFOPLAN-Ref. No , promoted by BMU/UBA, Germany) Goals –Integration of the Environmental Thesaurus (UmThes), a national gazetteer and a chronology of evironmental events in a common data model (topic maps) –Building associations between the professional terms, places names and events –Providing access to the network for other applications (e.g. gein®) by Web Services Umweltbundesamt