[Seavox] Devices ontology

[Roy Lowry]

Dear All,

Since my last e-mail kicking off the idea of a devices ontology I have had a discussion with John Graybeal at MMI who came to the identical conclusion that there was a need for such an ontology at the MMI sensor workshop in Portland last year. It seems crazy having two independent efforts to the same end and so we agreed that we should do this in collaboration.  It may well be that we end up serving the result of this work in parallel from the NDG server (for a SeaDataNet one-stop shop) and the MMI server, but it's parallel development work that we really need to avoid. 

The basic approach we've agreed is that I'll look at the problem from the 'bottom-up' perspective whilst he and Luis will take more of a 'top-down' approach looking at developing a classification network through community input.  I think it will also materialise that John's main interest/expertise is in in-situ sensors whilst for SeaDataNet metadata purposes the 'device' remit is much wider taking in samplers and laboratory instruments.

Communication is the key to making this work.  First-off could I ask everyone in the SeaVoX community interested in working on this device ontology to register interest on  http://marinemetadata.org/ontdevices and consider participating in the kick-off telecon.

Meanwhile, I am starting some work within the SeaDataNet community to rationalise lists of terms used to describe groups of devices at various levels of granularity - there are at least five of these in BODC alone.  This will serve SeaDataNet operational requirements in the short-term but will also be one of the inputs into the MMI community information resource.  I will also kick off an effort to use the SeaDataNet partnership to build a low level device catalogue (maufacturer/model number level) of devices that are in use.

Cheers, Roy.