Thomas Robert

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Thomas
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Robert
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  • Presentation
    Aligned semantics to advance data interoperability across the ocean value chain - from raw data to societal goals [poster]
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2019-09-16) Shepherd, Adam ; Caltagirone, Scott ; Kokkinaki, Alexandra ; Leadbetter, Adam ; Moncoiffe, Gwenaelle ; Simpson, Pauline ; Thomas, Robert ; Buttigieg, Pier Luigi
    The FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Re-usability) have pervaded discussions on data across disciplines and sectors.While data Findability and Accessibility has greatly improved, considerable difficulties in scalable interoperation remain. Without significant progress, the rapidly growing stores of ocean data risk being siloed for many years to come. A key aspect of Interoperability is "semantic": using knowledge representation (KR) to translate human understanding into machine-readable form. Quality KR allows machines to "understand" what any information artifact is about and relate it to similar artifacts, enabling discovery and enhancing reuse. KR products are usually expressed as vocabularies, glossaries, thesauri, or ontologies (collectively, terminologies), each with its own costs and benefits. Ironically, most marine terminologies are, themselves, not truly interoperable. This is an unfortunate but inevitable outcome of localised and transient funding, and the lack of sustained global infrastructures.Nonetheless, voluntary consortia are addressing this issue with urgency to realise the promise of KR in ocean observation. Here, we present 1) the alignment of well-adopted marine terminologies, 2) a collective strategy for sustained interoperability, and 3) a use case featuring the IOC-UNESCO Ocean Best Practice System. Initialised by the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office, we are interlinking terminologies from the Natural Environment Research Council's Vocabulary Server, the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry, and the Earth Science Information Partners. To serve the UNESCO Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, this effort includes ontologies which represent both the Essential Ocean Variables and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, we provide perspectives on what measures are needed to meet the interoperability challenge at scale over the next decade.
  • Preprint
    Experiences of a “semantics smackdown”
    ( 2016-02) Leadbetter, Adam ; Shepherd, Adam ; Arko, Robert A. ; Chandler, Cynthia L. ; Chen, Yanning ; Dockery, Nkemdirim ; Ferreira, Renata ; Fu, Linyun ; Thomas, Robert ; West, Patrick ; Zednik, Stephan
    Within the field of ocean science there is a long history of using controlled vocabularies and other Semantic Web techniques to provide a common and easily exchanged description of datasets. As an activity within the European Union, United States, Australian-funded project “Ocean Data Interoperability Platform”, a workshop took place in June 2014 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to further the use of these Semantic Web techniques with the aim of producing a set of Linked Data publication patterns which describe many parts of a marine science dataset. During the workshop, a Semantic Web development methodology was followed which promoted the use of a team with mixed skills (computer, data and marine science experts) to rapidly prototype a Linked Data publication pattern which could be iterated in the future. In this paper we outline the methodology employed in the workshop, and examine both the technical and sociological outcomes of a workshop of this kind.