Speaker
Descrizione
Semantic interoperability is crucial for the accurate interpretation of digital resources in environmental sciences. The variety of data and digital objects produced and shared across disciplines necessitates open and shared semantic artefacts and services for the integration and reuse of digital objects. While semantic artefacts define domain-specific concepts, semantic services support their retrieval and reuse. Significant progress has been made within the ITINERIS project to implement FAIR practices for the Environmental Research Infrastructures community. A key achievement has been the FAIRification of semantic artefacts used/managed by Research Infrastructures through publications in semantic catalogues and enhanced metadata descriptions, ultimately increasing their findability, accessibility and reuse. In addition, a cross-infrastructure thesaurus has been generated, validated by the ITINERIS community, and aligned with existing standards to support infra- and inter-community shared knowledge on actors, facilities, services and research products provided and used by Research Infrastructure communities operating in the environmental domain. Lastly, a Terminology Service has been developed to ensure a seamless human and machine access and reuse of semantic artefacts distributed across different semantic catalogues (N = 30), managed and/or used by the ITINERIS community. The Terminology Service provides a unique access point to distributed semantic artefacts enabling the federated search and retrieval of multi- and interdisciplinary classes/concepts. The service integrates a semi-automatic mapping tool for improving alignments between classes/concepts and monitors updates (versioning) of semantic artefacts available within the connected catalogues. The service was designed as a flexible tool to be integrated into (meta)data management systems for semantic annotation, and it can be also adapted to different domains and applications within and beyond the panorama of national and European environmental Research Infrastructures. Through this approach, ITINERIS strengthens the semantic backbone within the field of environmental science, laying the groundwork for enhanced interdisciplinary semantic interoperability at national and international level.
