The Marine Metadata Interoperability Project

Lessons from WHOI

Getting A Book: The Way It Used To Be I need to special order a book. What book do you want? It’s by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. Yes, we can order that. It’s When will you have it? Maybe Tuesday, but if it’s not in stock, not for a month. Can you send it to me? No, you’ll need to pick it up. OK, can I pay by phone? Yes, we’ll need your credit card and address. OK, here’s my card info and address… OK, we’ll call you when it’s in.

Getting A Book: The Way It Is Now

Doing Science: The Way It Has Been Hey Francisco, you still running that mooring in Monterey? Yeah, John, what do you need? Is it collecting current data? Yeah, you looking for profiles? Yup, are you doing that with an ADCP? Yes, we’ll probably start profiling soon, too. No, don’t need that. How do I get the data? You want the raw data or QCd? Real-time?. Oh, the QC’d, delayed mode data, definitely, last 3 years worth. That’d be off our dods site, here’s the address.. Documentation come with that? We got some, I’ll have to get one of my techs to send it to you…

Doing Science: The Way It Is and Will Be

Doing Science: Another Option

Or…

Big Picture: IOOS Digital Data Center

Global Coastal Regional 3Observatories 25Sites 100sInstrument types 1000sInstruments 10000sParticipants Big Picture: ORION

Tie It Together

ORION Conceptual Network Topology

Imagine a Trip…

From Technician…

… To Scientist

Looks Easy

But What About…?

What Will It Take? (from ORION CI Concept of Operations) What will it take for a science researcher to access all the data from MBARI, NDBC, *and* ORION, assess the data that is useful for his or her project, bring it into an analysis program, and produce the first visualization all in a single day, and still have time to call one of the data producers and ask about the details of the latest quality control process?

What Else It Will Take Communities Creating Marine Metadata Interoperability

Why? Because the problem is too large, too broad, and too heterogeneous to be solved by fiat. How? Bring the communities together using information resources. Identify needs not addressed, and create teams from the community to address them. Create opportunities to develop shared solutions.

What’s needed for marine metadata interoperability? We need community agreement in several areas. The way to transfer the metadata: Transport Protocol What data to transfer: Content Standard What the contents mean: Vocabulary Transport Protocol Content Standard Vocabulary

We have some of these— so where’s the problem? (1) EML ISO DCMI FGDC MarineXML GML ADL NetCDF ASCII ContentContent ProtocolProtocol ESML OPeNDAP REST SOAPZ39.50 DFDL THREDDS LAS WxS HTTP HDF TIF JPEG MetadataData Coards/CF

We have some of these— so where’s the problem? (2) Search for sea water temp data Water Temperature sea_water_ temperature TEMP BODC GCMD CF Only matches

Building a digital community —around metadata Find people who see the problems and want to work together to fix them Get funding to support basic infrastructure, distributed resources, technical leadership

Building a digital community —around metadata Create a community center

Discovering common ground Use community center as a starting point. One place with all the information References Reviews, comments News, events Content provider A meeting place for people, projects, and organizations.

Identifying technical gaps— Vocabularies Few formal marine vocabularies exist There was no agreed format or location Most weren’t comprehensive or detailed There was no way to connect them There was no architecture to nurture them –Like children, they need encouragement to grow healthy and strong, and to play well with others Water Temperature sea_water_ temperature TEMP BODC GCMD CF

Semantic Interoperability Distributed and heterogeneous systems are able to solve issues related to controlled vocabulary.

Vocabularies: Discovery and harmonization DTD CommaSeparatedValues HTML TabSeparatedValues RelationalDatabase XML/XSD RDF OWL

~ 60 ontologies are available at

Vocabularies: Harmonization with Voc2OWL

Relating Vocabularies: Mapping tool: Got VINE? Vocabulary INtegration Environment

Quick Example: Mapped Terms

Demonstrating Systems: Semantic Interoperability

Our Guides Robert Arko, LDEO Julie Bosch, NOAA Taco de Bruin, Francisco Chavez, MBARI Ben Domenico, Unidata Stephen Miller, SIO Lola Olsen, NASA Goddard Dawn Wright, Oregon State University Steering Committee Executive Committee John Graybeal, MBARI. (PI) Philip Bogden, SURA/SCOOP Matthew Howard, Texas A&M Andrew Maffei, WHOI Karen Stocks, UCSD

MMI: Your Handy Reference Guide MMI: Help Line: Get info re site: Workshop: Ontologies: Term Search: Demo: