Building a Common Vocabulary for Marine Science

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Shakespeare

and use these widely distributed data efficiently, they all must either be written in the same metadata language, or be expressed in a language that can be translated easily. The Marine Metadata Interoperability Project grew out of the frustrations of Monterey Bay area data managers. These technologists found very few useful comparisons of metadata approaches for the marine sciences and little community awareness of the options. After a successful workshop on this topic, John Graybeal, Stephanie Watson, and interested community members were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2004 to improve metadata practices in marine sciences. One of the biggest challenges in making data systems interoperate with each other is their differing vocabularies (Figure 24). Solving this problem is not as simple as anointing a standard or two, or even making a few new ones. Many teams of data management professionals have spent hundreds of staff years developing standards for one application or another. While undoubtedly many improvements to these approaches can be debated, they often represented the best solution possible for each circumstance. A solution optimized to a specific application will not meet all current and future needs, and the challenge is to find a metadata approach that the community endorses. To bridge this gap in interoperability caused by differences in language, the MMI Project hosted a vocabulary mapping workshop. The workshop goal was to enable people without formal training in the systematics of data classifications to start building a body of vocabulary mappings, which could then be used as the basis for developing translation tools and services.
Figure : Two data repositories support different programs, but with overlapping measurements (the same time, and the same type of measurement, both in the Monterey Bay). The databases for the Shore Side Data System (SSDS) and the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN) both contain temperature data, but use different terminology, making it difficult to put together the data from the two repositories.

ong before scientific data were being stored on computers, people were talking about how to describe, name, and classify their world. From dictionaries to card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System to the TV Guide, descriptions of things have been critical to finding and using information.
The term metadata is used as shorthand for the information that describes a data setinformation that is critical for understanding what was measured and how, in what units it is expressed, and in what format it is written. The advent of computers and, more recently, large environmental data systems supporting increasingly specialized scientific explorations, hasnt changed the basic need for descriptions, names, and classifications. Whats unique about todays circumstances are the rate at which the worlds data and knowledge are changing and the potential to rapidly access vastly more information and knowledge. To find

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Building a Common Vocabulary for Marine Science

Figure 5: Teams of domain experts and ontologists (people who deal with the classification and relation of semantic concepts) gather to map the terms from vocabularies theyve previously identified as significant, at a workshop hosted by the MMI project.

These results could make it possible to connect diverse data systems, making oceanographic data easier to find, use, and integrate. Before this workshop began, the MMI team developed dedicated tools, processes, and training materials to maximize its benefit, publishing all these materials online. While in attendance for 2 days, over 45 science and technical specialists used the MMI-developed tools to associate terms from different scientific vocabularies (Figure 25). The team received a wealth of information and feedback about all aspects of the workshop and published a detailed workshop report and an article in Eos, an American Geophysical Union Publication, to share the results with the community. In post-workshop surveys, over half the respondents said they had continued to use the tools and materials after the workshop was over, and the MMI team continues to develop and deploy software capabilities that depend on workshop mappings. In the biggest sense, the MMI project is thoroughly diverse and collaborative. An international Steering Committee meets monthly to guide progress and set project policies, while the Technical Team (also international) focuses on recommending and implementing needed improvements to the web site. Some of the members are paid small amounts from proposal funds, while others volunteer their efforts because of the community awareness they develop. Members signing up at the website, and the documents and information downloaded from the site, provide key metrics indicating the project is increasing its visibility and value.

Creating a sense of teamwork and community is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of the effort, which relies on the continued efforts of all of its participants to keep progress strong. In fact, the strongest outcome of the MMI project to date may be the formation of relationships across the entire oceanographic community, such as with the cyberinfrastructure committees of two major U.S. ocean observing systems. By embracing an integrative and community-building philosophy, MMI has been identified as a leader of the entire oceanographic community in the metadata realm. At the same time, to be effective the project must develop grounded solutions to real-world problems. MBARI, with its diversity of data sources and observing systems, teams of collaborating engineers, and goal-oriented scientists working across the disciplines of oceanography, provides a superb test case for MMI solutions. The MMI project leveraged this environment to develop its first demonstration service, which allowed a user to select a data type (for example: ocean temperature) and automatically receive such data from multiple MBARI data repositories. In its first full year of operation, the MMI project built a community committed to improving oceanographic data management. The MMI Project website, http://marinemetadata.org, encompasses more than 1,000 documents, references, and guides on the topic of marine metadata (Figure 26). With over 225 members and several dozen frequent contributors, the site provides the most current and comprehensive set of resources on this topic available to any environmental science community. With support from both NSF and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), MMI plans to grow into a self-supporting organization, funded and advanced by the community that it serves.

 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Building a Common Vocabulary for Marine Science

Figure : Critical to MMIs success is the creation of a community to collaborate on the challenges of marine metadata. The MMI website (http://marinemetadata.org) is a key conduit for this community to contribute and share its knowledge.

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