1. M.Benno Blumenthal, Michael Bell,
How IRI is using RDF/OWL Technologies for both Discovery and Use Metadata
M.Benno Blumenthal, Michael Bell,
John del Corral, and Emily Grover-Kopec International Research Institute for Climate and Society Columbia University

2. Faceted Search Interface

3. RDF: framework for writing connections
Triplets of
Subject
Property (or Predicate)
Object
URI’s identify things, i.e. most of the above

4. Datatype Properties WOA dc:title “NOAA NODC WOA01”
WOA dc:description “NOAA NODC WOA01: World Ocean Atlas 2001, an atlas of objectively analyzed fields of major ocean parameters at monthly, seasonal, and annual time scales. Resolution: 1x1; Longitude: global; Latitude: global; Depth: [0 m,5500 m]; Time: [Jan,Dec]; monthly”
This is what we are used to thinking about as attributes, except that the property is a URI rather than a prearranged agreement. Already this is progress.

5. Object Properties WOA dcterm:hasPart MONTHLY Alternatively
WOA my:hasSubDataset MONTHLY
my:hasSubDataset rdfs:subPropertyOf dcterm:hasPart
This is important: I have locally defined a specific relationship while mapping it to a convention. When a more specific convention comes along, I can add that mapping as well.

6. netcdf/CF in RDF
{SST a cfatt:non_coordinate_variable,
SST cfatt:standard_name cf:sea_surface_temperature,
SST netcdf:hasDimension longitude }
Object properties provide a framework for explicitly writing down relationships between data objects/components, e.g. vague meaning of nesting is made explicit
Properties also can be related, since they are objects too

7. Ontologies
Use Conventions to connect concepts to established sets of concepts
Generate additional “virtual” triples from the original set and semantics
RDFS – some property/class semantics
OWL – additional property/class semantics
“late semantic binding”

8. Search Interface
Items (datasets/maps)
Terms
Facets
Taxa

9. Search Interface Semantic API
{item} dc:title dc:description rss:link iridl:icon
dcterm:isPartOf {item2}
dcterm:isReplacedBy {item2}
{item} trm:isDescribedBy {term}
{term} a {facet} of {taxa} of {trm:Term},
{facet} a {trm:Facet}, {taxa} a {trm:Taxa},
{term} trm:directlyImplies {term2}

10. Ontologies
Data Servers
MMI
JPL
bibliography
Start Point
Standards
Organizations
RDF Crawler
Location
Canonicalizer
RDFS Semantics
Owl Semantics
SWRL Rules
SeRQL CONSTRUCT
Time
Canonicalizer
Sesame
Search Queries
Search Interface

11. Maproom Search: Humidity

12. Maproom Search: precipitation

13. In a more perfect world
Conventions would have RDF/OWL ontologies expressing them
Metadata transport mechanisms would carry
explicit properties between their data objects/components,
Explicitly map their properties to conventions
Important not only because it provides a namespace that can be pointed to, but also because explicit object relationships may mean that the RDF representation is much simpler to understand/decode, preparing the convention for future metadata transport mechanisms