<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">Today's Informal Lunch Talk:</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">When: Noon, Monday, January 24, 2011</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Where: Starr 209 on the MBL Campus (<a href="http://www.mbl.edu/about/visit/directions/mbl_interactive_map/">map</a>)</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">Who: </span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">Cyndy Chandler, Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office and WHOI</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Title: "Developing an Ontology for Ocean Biogeochemistry Data."</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"></span></font></div><div><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Summary:</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><p>Semantic Web technologies offer great promise for enabling new and
better scientific research. However, significant challenges must be met
before the promise of the Semantic Web can be realized for a discipline
as diverse as oceanography. Evolving expectations for open access to
research data combined with the complexity of global ecosystem science
research themes present a significant challenge, and one that is best
met through an informatics approach.</p><p>The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office
(BCO-DMO) is funded by the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean
Sciences to work with ocean biogeochemistry researchers to improve
access to data resulting from their respective programs. In an effort
to improve data access, BCO-DMO staff members are collaborating with
researchers from the Tetherless World Constellation (Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute) to develop an ontology that formally describes
the concepts and relationships in the data managed by the BCO-DMO. The
project required transforming a legacy system of human-readable, flat
files of metadata to well-ordered controlled vocabularies to a fully
developed ontology. To improve semantic interoperability, terms from
the BCO-DMO controlled vocabularies are being mapped to controlled
vocabulary terms adopted by other oceanographic data management
organizations. While the entire process has proven to be difficult,
time-consuming and labor-intensive, the work has been rewarding and is a
necessary prerequisite for the eventual incorporation of Semantic Web
tools.</p><p>From the beginning of the project, development of the ontology has
been guided by a use case based approach. The use cases were derived
from data access related requests received from members of the research
community served by the BCO-DMO. The resultant ontology satisfies the
requirements of the use cases and reflects the information stored in the
metadata database. The BCO-DMO metadata database currently contains
information that powers several different user and machine-to-machine
interfaces to the BCO-DMO data repositories. One goal of the ontology
development project is to enable subsequent development of
semantically-enabled components (e.g. faceted search) to enhance the
power of those interfaces. Addition of semantic capabilities to the
existing data interfaces will improve data access through enhanced data
discovery.</p><p>In addition to sharing the ontology, we will describe the challenges
encountered thus far in the project, the technologies currently being
used, and the strategies associated with the use case based informatics
approach.</p><p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Speaker Bio:</span></b></p><p>Cyndy Chandler is a project PI and co-manager of the NSF funded
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
and is an Information Systems Associate in the Marine Chemistry and
Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(WHOI). During her 30 years at WHOI she has participated in 35 research
cruises and is one of the three originating PIs for the Rolling Deck to
Repository (R2R) project funded by NSF to ensure proper stewardship of
data collected aboard research vessels in the US academic fleet. Her
current research interests include several collaborative projects in the
field of ocean informatics: development of a framework for the
publication of scientific data; encouraging development and use of
controlled vocabularies for improving the management and efficacy of
oceanographic research data; and development of an ontology for
biogeochemistry data.</p><p>Related Web sites: <br>
BCO-DMO <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bco-dmo.org/" class="external-link" rel="nofollow">http://bco-dmo.org</a>/<br>
R2R <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://rvdata.us/" class="external-link" rel="nofollow">http://rvdata.us/</a></p></span></font></div><div><div><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">The Monday Lunch talks are held every other Monday. We have created a </span></font><a href="http://wiki.eol.org/display/public/Scientific+Informatics+Events+in+Woods+Hole"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">wiki page</span></font></a><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> for these and other Informatics events in Woods Hole. Please consider giving a talk, we have lot's of openings in 2011! Let us know if you about any informatics related event and we will add it to this page. Those of you who haven't subscribed to the Informatics discussion list, you might want to. Information on how to subscribe is on the wiki page above.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">See you at noon!</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Holly Miller </span></font></div></div><div><a href="mailto:hmiller@mbl.edu"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">hmiller@mbl.edu</span></font></a></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Anne Thessen </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="mailto:athessen@eol.org">athessen@eol.org</a></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Andrew Maffei </span></font></div><div><a href="mailto:amaffei@whoi.edu"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">amaffei@whoi.edu</span></font></a></div><div>
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