HR: 1340h
AN: IN53B-1211 [Abstracts]
TI: A Prototype Ontology Tool and Interface for Coastal Atlas Interoperability
AU: Wright, D J
EM: dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu
AF: Oregon State University, Dept. of Geosciences
104 Wilkinson Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331-5506, United States
AU: * Bermudez, L
EM: bermudez@mbari.org
AF: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, CA
95039, United States
AU: O'Dea, L
EM: l.odea@ucc.ie
AF: Coastal & Marine Resources Centre, University College Cork
Naval Base, Cobh, OR Cork, Ireland
AU: Haddad, T
EM: tanya.haddad@state.or.us
AF: Oregon Ocean Coastal Mgmt Program, 635 Capitol St. NE, Suite 150, Salem, OR 97301-
2540, United States
AU: Cummins, V
EM: v.cummins@ucc.ie
AF: Coastal & Marine Resources Centre, University College Cork
Naval Base, Cobh, OR Cork, Ireland
AB:
While significant capacity has been built in the field of web-based coastal mapping and informatics in the last
decade, little has been done to take stock of the implications of these efforts or to identify best practice in terms of
taking lessons learned into consideration. This study reports on the second of two transatlantic workshops that
bring together key experts from Europe, the United States and Canada to examine state-of-the-art developments
in coastal web atlases (CWA), based on web enabled geographic information systems (GIS), along with future
needs in mapping and informatics for the coastal practitioner community. While multiple benefits are derived from
these tailor-made atlases (e.g. speedy access to multiple sources of coastal data and information; economic
use of time by avoiding individual contact with different data holders), the potential exists to derive added value
from the integration of disparate CWAs, to optimize decision-making at a variety of levels and across themes. The
second workshop focused on the development of a strategy to make coastal web atlases interoperable by way of
controlled vocabularies and ontologies. The strategy is based on web service oriented architecture and an
implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services, such as Web Feature Services (WFS) and
Web Map Service (WMS). Atlases publishes Catalog Web Services (CSW) using ISO 19115 metadata and
controlled vocabularies encoded as Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). URIs allows the terminology of each
atlas to be uniquely identified and facilitates mapping of terminologies using semantic web technologies. A
domain ontology was also created to formally represent coastal erosion terminology as a use case, and with a
test linkage of those terms between the Marine Irish Digital Atlas and the Oregon Coastal Atlas. A web interface is
being developed to discover coastal hazard themes in distributed coastal atlases as part of a broader
International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN). Lessons learned from this prototype will help build regional atlases
and improve decision support systems.
UR: http://workshop1.science.oregonstate.edu
DE: 4260 Ocean data assimilation and reanalysis (3225)
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting