Terminology Components for Ecoinformatics Sharing Gail Hodge Consultant to USGS BIO/NBII Information International Associates, Inc. 28 January 2004 science for a changing world

Present Initiatives EEA Multilingual Environmental Glossary CNR EARTh, The Environmental Application Reference Thesaurus GEMET US EPA Terminology Reference System (TRS) ITIS, Integrated Taxonomic Information System NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus UNEP interest in Environmental Thesaurus and Terminology

EEA Multilingual Environmental Glossary ~ 1120 terms and their definitions in 23 languages Terms are taken from the EEA web site and are validated by national focal points Interface identifies new additions

CNR EARth – Environmental Application Reference Thesaurus Under development since 1999; progress to be presented at UNEP Terminology Meeting; completed thesaurus expected by November 2004 Contains about 10,000 terms; continuous improvement to increase its semantic coverage (conceptual mapping) Other terminology like the EEA Glossary and EDEN-IW are included Developed in British and North-American English, Spanish and Italian, with partial coverage in other languages Will contain large set of definitions in English and Italian EARTh will have a new Faceted Classification Scheme, a new Hierarchical Set-Up, as well as a Thematic Set-up to integrate the faceted classification Extended set of associative relations (RTs) developed to increase the potential for using the thesaurus in various applications

GEMET 5100 terms in 19 languages Translation into other languages, both European and extra-European is ongoing Used in a variety of settings, including those requiring translation Restructuring is being considered

EPA Terminology Reference System (TRS) Single resource for agency environmental terminology Compiled from a number of agency and external resources Contains ~11900 terms and definitions from 26 organizations and 255 sources Includes terms from GEMET, program offices, information systems and states Updated periodically with new collections and collection updates Will be used to generate a keyword list to support searching the EPA Data Registry and keyword generation for web resources Investigating multilingual capabilities for future versions

Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) Authority file for taxonomic names of plants, animals, fungi and microbes Emphasis on North America Partner with other organizations such as GBIF on the Catalogue of Life

NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus Developed through partnership with CSA Contains 9750 terms (7500 preferred and 2250 nonpreferred) In use for indexing cataloged web sites Update mechanisms in place including submission of candidate terms in English, Spanish and Portuguese by users Incorporation into BioBot Searching and tools from the NBII nodes Developing partnerships in pursuit of a broader thesaurus which includes forestry and fire ecology/management,

UNEP Interest Interested in Environmental Thesaurus and Terminology Upcoming Terminology Meeting

How Can These Efforts Work Together? Share terminology Share tool development, particularly with regard to semantic web Participate in joint demonstration projects Terminology registry – web page for terminology initiatives

Role of Terminology in Ecoinformatics Identify and demonstrate the role of terminology & ontologies in ecoinformatics for:  data standards  semantic web  interoperability