1UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva The use of GEMET for the Swiss Environmental Catalogue “Envirocat” April 2004

2UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva The use of GEMET for Swiss Environmental Catalogue What is Envirocat? Why did we choose GEMET as the Thesaurus? How was GEMET implemented in Envirocat? Comments and needs

3UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva What is Envirocat? UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva is involved in two projects of SAEFL (Swiss Agency for Environment, Forest and Landscape): CH-CDS and Alpine CDS (Catalogue of Data Sources). A SAEFL/UNEP partnership for the Swiss environmental metadata catalogue

4UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva What is Envirocat? In 1998, SAEFL decide to use the European system ‘CDS’, the application Webcds was launched officially in June In 2003, it is decided to develop a new tool called ‘Envirocat’ allowing decentralised on-line management of metadata. Partners’ requests and CDS experience and analysis was used during the new application development.

5UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Why did we choose GEMET as Thesaurus? Save the amount of work invested in metadata collection and facilitate the importation of the 6,000 metadata-entries already included and their key words indexing. A major priority was to:

6UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Why did we choose GEMET as Thesaurus? 2’449 addresses defined by 1’137 keywords, 3’535 objects defined by 12’808 keywords. administration agriculture air biology building chemistry climate natural dynamics economics energy environmental policy fishery food, drinking water forestry general geography human health animal husbandry industry information legislation military aspects natural areas, landscape, ecosystems noise, vibrations physics pollution materials radiations tourism research resources disasters, accidents, risk trade, services social aspects, population soil space transport urban environment, urban stress waste water

7UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Why did we choose GEMET as Thesaurus? Switzerland needed at least 4 languages: de, fr, it, en The access analysis shows us the relative weight of each language. CH-CDS language use in 2002 German: 45% French: 30% Italian: 12% English: 13% Its linguistic possibilities:

8UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Why did we choose GEMET as Thesaurus? In order to have a large set of environmental terms to be used to: –describe metadata (could have less); –search metadata (number ensures better retrieval) 87,193 terms in GEMET 3.0!

9UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva How GEMET was implemented in Envirocat? the weight of the Thesaurus was reduced: only 4 languages were kept: (German, French, English and Italian) 87,193 terms -> 24,274; Database model was simplified –hierarchy was not answering exactly to our needs: so we kept only terms and themes tables (not synonyms, groups, supergroups) –Broader and Narrower terms were used to create a relation table representing the hierarchy. A subset of GEMET 3.0 is currently running for better system performance:

10UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva How GEMET was implemented in Envirocat? keep hierarchy of terms; allow attribution to EEA themes (automatically created through terms); Add and eventually link other Thesauri in the future if needed... The data model allows multiple hierarchy to:

11UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva How GEMET was implemented in Envirocat? During fulfillment:

12UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva How GEMET was implemented in Envirocat? For search... Test data existing in database : title Essai de donnée sur le lac abstract:L'utilisation... forêt …. l'eau.... Keywords: gestion agricole without option search 'eau' = ok search 'forêt' = ok search 'agricole' = no search 'wasser' = no search 'forest' = no search 'Landwirtschaft' = no with option search in thesaurus search 'eau' = ok search 'forêt' = ok search 'agricole' = ok search 'wasser' = no search 'forest' = no search 'landwirtschaft' = ok with option search in thesaurus +Translation search 'eau' = ok search 'forêt' = ok search 'agricole' = ok search 'wasser' = ok search 'forest' = ok search 'landwirtschaft' = ok

13UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva How GEMET was implemented in Envirocat? For topic search... In CH-WebCDS experience, we see that the average use was 78% done by ‘quick search’, 17% by ‘topic search’ and 5% by ‘expert search’. EEA topic can be selected with ‘ticks’.

14UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Comments and needs? Alpine ConventionISO ­Mountain Farming ­Regional Planning ­Waste Management ­Energy ­Mountain forests ­Population and Culture ­Conservation of Nature and the Countryside ­Soil Conservation ­Prevention of Air Pollution ­Water Management ­Tourism and Recreation ­Transport ­Farming ­Biota ­Boundaries ­Climatology, Meteorology, Atmosphere ­Economy ­Elevation ­Environment ­Geoscientific Information ­Health ­Imagery, Base maps, Earth Cover ­Intelligence, Military ­Inland Waters ­Location ­Oceans ­Planning, Cadastre ­Society ­Structure ­Transportation ­Utilities, Communications

15UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Comments and needs? Sometimes too detailed or specific; Duplication of terms due to different translations (i.e. Lärmbekämpfung/lutte contre le bruit, and Lärmbekämpfung/Diminution du bruit) GEMET:

16UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Comments and needs? Add new Thematic Theme list Envirocat future development in term of Thesaurus: Direct user remarks.Implementation of access analysis tool to answer the following questions: which words are often searched by a normal user or by authors during edition phase? Add terms “à la mode”. Obtain less themes (about 20 vs 40 EEA themes) and build a thematic hierarchy. Link GEMET with other topic list and eventually implement themes from ISO and Alpine Convention. Adding/deleting terms according to the user needs

17UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva Comments and needs? Is it possible to develop a kind of ISO standard for Environmental Thesauri? New Thesaurus of “Super” Thesaurus should ensure compatibility with GEMET product. An Environmental Thesaurus core could be maintained through an international working group and an on-line service could be proposed to download extension module (for GEMET or new Thesauri) by languages, thematic specialisations or nations. Open questions or proposition:

18UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva More information? Actualy 300 metadata published on 6,000 existing Jean-Philippe Richard UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva 11, Ch. des Anémones