Linked Vocabulary API for the Earth Sciences Community AGU Fall Meeting 2014 Stephan Zednik Peter Fox Linyun Fu Patrick West Xiaogang Ma

Background The Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning Vocabularies (CMSPV) project focused on vocabulary and ontology development within the context of the Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP) and Ocean and Coastal Mapping (OCM) portals for environmental inter- agency collaboration. The CMSP and OCM portals reference data tagged using a multitude of science vocabularies which have overlapping scopes. 1

The Vocabulary Problem Data from numerous agencies using numerous vocabularies Varying state of vocabulary –Representation –Publication –Usage –Mapping 2

CMSPV Objectives Address the need for a standard manner for agencies to publish and consume hierarchical vocabularies on the web Vocabulary Representation Recommendations –Use existing semantic vocabulary Vocabulary Access Recommendations –Open license –Non-proprietary format –Resolvable Identifiers Vocabulary Service Recommendations –Text-based search –Collections –Relationship inference Best-practices for mapping between vocabularies –Formally defined mapping –machine-readable 3

CMSPV Testbed Vocabulary National Information Management Systems (NIMS) Data Categories Data categories for marine spatial planning Revised copy to be formally released under different name From Excel document 8 top-level categories 94 terms 4

Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Model for expressing concept schemes in RDF Low-cost solution for porting existing knowledge organization systems to the Semantic Web Supports mapping between concept schemes W3C Recommendation (2009) SKOS Primer - 5

SKOS Model Resources –Concept Scheme, Concepts Hierarchical relations –broader/narrower/related –broaderTransitive/narrowerTransitive Mapping relations –narrowMatch/broadMatch/relatedMatch/closeMatch/ex actMatch Annotations –Labels –Documentation (e.g. definition, example, scope, history note) 6

NIMS SKOS ### term:0043 rdf:type owl:NamedIndividual, skos:Concept ; skos:prefLabel "Threatened and Endangered ; skos:inScheme vocab:nims ; skos:narrower term:0044, term:0100. ### term:0044 rdf:type owl:NamedIndividual, skos:Concept ; skos:prefLabel "State Listed Threatened and Endangered ; skos:inScheme vocab:nims. 7

Linked Data Use URIs as names for things Use HTTP URIs so people can look up those names When someone looks up a URI provide useful information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL) Include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things 8

Epimorphics Linked Data API (ELDA) Easy-to-use web interface onto linked data User-defined (read-only) RESTful API over linked data resources Configurable –API URLs –Queries –Filters –Response Types (e.g. RDF, XML, JSON, HTML) 9

Linked Vocabulary Architecture 10

Linked Vocabulary API 11 URI base-template –/vocab/{vocab_id}/term/{term_id} –ex: /vocab/nims/term/0006 Collections –/vocab/{vocab_id}/terms –/vocab/{vocab_id}/term/{term_id}/related Text-based Search –/vocab/{vocab_id}/terms?anyLabelContains={text} Mapping –/vocab/{vocab_id}/term/{term_id}/closeMatch For full API see

CMSPV HTML View 12

CMSPV Outcomes Recommendation –Publish vocabularies as Linked Open Data using SKOS Development of vocabulary service –SKOS-based RESTful API – Service hosting preliminary NIMS Data Categories Vocabulary – 13

Next Steps More vocabularies Feedback from greater community Vocabulary mapping in the wild! Iterate on API (especially vocab mapping) Possible Research Data Alliance (RDA) interest group on vocabulary services 14

Thanks CMSP/OCM Workshop Epimorphics Ltd. W3C SKOS Working Group 15

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS? 16

Links CMSPV Project Page – CMSPV NIMS Linked Vocabulary API – Linked Vocabulary API on Github – W3C SKOS Primer – Linked Data – Design Issues – Linked Data API Specification – ELDA on Github – 17

BACKUP SLIDES 18

CMSPV JSON { "format" : "linked-data-api", "version" : "0.2", "result" : {"_about" : " "definition" : " "extendedMetadataVersion" : " "primaryTopic" : {"_about" : " "inScheme" : {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "NIMS Data Categories"}, "label" : ["Cultural and Historic"], "narrower" : [{"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Locations of Artifacts Reflecting US Maritime History"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Areas + Resources of Cultural Significance to Native Peoples"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Important View-sheds"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Historically Significant Properties"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Protected Areas"} ], "narrowerTransitive" : [{"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Locations of Artifacts Reflecting US Maritime History"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Areas + Resources of Cultural Significance to Native Peoples"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Important View-sheds"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Historically Significant Properties"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Protected Areas"} ], "prefLabel" : "Cultural and Historic", "semanticRelation" : [{"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Locations of Artifacts Reflecting US Maritime History"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Areas + Resources of Cultural Significance to Native Peoples"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Important View-sheds"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Historically Significant Properties"}, {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "Protected Areas"} ], "topConceptOf" : {"_about" : " "prefLabel" : "NIMS Data Categories"}, "type" : [" " "type" : [" } 19

SKOS (cont.) 20

5-Star Linked Open Data ★ Make your stuff available on the web (whatever format) under an open license ★★ Make it available as structured data (e.g. Excel instead of image scan of a table) ★★★ Use non-proprietary formats (e.g. CSV instead of Excel) ★★★★ Use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff ★★★★★ Link your data to other data to provide context 21

ELDA (cont.) 22

LDA Specification lva:vocabularyTermsEndpoint a api:ListEndpoint ; rdfs:comment “…" ; api:uriTemplate "/vocab/{vocabulary}/terms" ; api:exampleRequestPath "/vocab/nims/terms" ; api:variable [ api:name "scheme" ; api:value "{base}/vocab/{vocabulary}" ; api:type rdfs:Resource ; ] ; api:selector [ api:where "?item skos:inScheme ?scheme. ?item skos:prefLabel ?label." ; api:orderBy "?label" ; ] ;. 23