[tdwg-content] Proposed new Darwin Core environmental terms from ENVO

Steve Baskauf steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu
Thu Oct 3 15:41:03 CEST 2013


The problem is that in TDWG we have some people writing and using OWL 
ontologies and we have other people using Excel spreadsheets.  I am 
fully in support of developing community ontologies.  The challenge is 
to find a way to help the Excel spreadsheet people start where they are 
and move towards something more semantically sophisticated.  That's what 
I'm trying to suggest here.

Hilmar Lapp wrote:
>
> On Oct 3, 2013, at 9:08 AM, Steve Baskauf wrote:
>
>>>> Or use ENVO uris.
>>>
>>> Yes, indeed. If they don't exist yet, ask that they do. That's the 
>>> way to build community ontologies - by a community actively working 
>>> to make the ontology what it needs it to be.
>> Well, the problem here is that there is only one ENVO ontology. 
>
> I would consider that a fortunate fact, not a problem.
>
>>   There are many systems for defining what a biome is (see wikipedia 
>> for examples).
>
> And so there are for what a gene function is, what a disease phenotype 
> is, what an animal anatomy element is, and so on. Yet, for all of 
> these rather domain cross-cutting subject areas, it has been possible 
> for different communities to converge on advancing together one or a 
> few common ontologies. This can require a lot of work, but the 
> eventual pay-off has been huge and is growing. I really don't see why 
> we can't strive for the same for environmental terms and concepts.
>
> -hilmar
>
> -- 
> ===========================================================
> : Hilmar Lapp  -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org 
> <http://informatics.nescent.org> :
> ===========================================================
>
>
>

-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

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