Open Information Linking for Environmental Research Infrastructures

Environmental research infrastructures (RIs) support data-intensive research by integrating large-scale sensor/observer networks with dedicated data curation services and analytical tools. However the diversity of scientific disciplines coupled with the lack of an accepted methodology for constructing new RIs inevitably leads to incompatibilities between the data models, metadata standards and service descriptions used by different RIs, inhibiting their usefulness for interdisciplinary research. In the absence of a common global ontology of science and infrastructure, these inconsistencies may best be counteracted by selectively bridging the semantics of the various vocabularies, standards and models used by the RIs at present. Open Information Linking for Environmental RIs (OIL-E) was developed within the FP7 project ENVRI to provide a framework for semantic linking of knowledge resources used by different environmental RIs. Built around a multi-viewpoint reference model ENVRI-RM, OIL-E is intended to act as a central exchange for linking information fragments and identifying gaps in the conceptual models of RIs.