Award Abstract # 1704896
EarthCube Building Blocks: Collaborative Proposal: GeoLink - Leveraging Semantics and Linked Data for Data Sharing and Discovery in the Geosciences

NSF Org: RISE
Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER)
Recipient: NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY, INC.
Initial Amendment Date: November 9, 2016
Latest Amendment Date: November 9, 2016
Award Number: 1704896
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Eva Zanzerkia
RISE
 Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER)
GEO
 Directorate for Geosciences
Start Date: October 1, 2016
End Date: August 31, 2017 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $50,718.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $50,718.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2014 = $50,717.00
History of Investigator:
  • Thomas Narock (Principal Investigator)
    tnarock@ndm.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 N CHARLES ST
BALTIMORE
MD  US  21210-2404
(410)532-5314
Sponsor Congressional District: 02
Primary Place of Performance: College of Notre Dame of Maryland
MD  US  21210-2404
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
02
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): J221RK5FMG94
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): EarthCube
Primary Program Source: 01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7433
Program Element Code(s): 807400
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.050

ABSTRACT

The proposed work addresses a challenge central to the EarthCube program's success: How to employ state of the art technology for geoscience data discovery, access, and integration. The project brings together significant geosciences holdings in the ocean, earth and polar sciences to demonstrate how innovative technologies can be robustly applied to these facilities to enhance the capabilities for scientists to discover and interpret relevant geoscience data and knowledge. The end product, GEOLink, will lower barriers to cross-repository data discovery and access, while respecting and preserving repository autonomy and heterogeneity. They will demonstrate the approach through a portal that allows searching and browsing of integrated content from multiple repositories.

A key challenge for EarthCube is to enable data discovery, access, and integration in a sustainable way. Existing data repositories and networks must be linked, while retaining their independent missions and services to existing disciplinary communities. Cultural, conceptual, and infrastructural heterogeneities must be respected in order to maintain different perspectives and differing priorities and thus foster inclusivity in the EarthCube endeavor. In particular, individual choices made by providers of data or repositories will need to be respected in an inclusive manner, and approaches to integration must reflect this. At the same time, however, the diversity and heterogeneity of geoscience data presents a significant barrier to its discovery. In this project, the researchers involved will develop a demonstration called GEOLink based on: 1) digital publication of geoscience data and knowledge as "Linked Open Data"; combined with 2) semantic integration using design patterns and vocabularies shared among federated repositories; and 3) an underlying cyberinfrastructure extendable in both depth and breadth, that can become a central building block for EarthCube data harmonization. The cyberinfrastructure underlying the approach is extendable, sustainable, and affordable - leveraging state of the art developments in Linked Open Data and formal semantics, grounded through shared Ontology Design Patterns. GEOLink-enabled repositories will support discovery of related resources, including Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R), the Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO), Integrated Earth Data Applications (IEDA), the Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER), DataONE, and the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), as well content from other EarthCube Building Block projects and collaborators.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Tom Narock and Hayden Wimmer "Linked data scientometrics in semantic e-Science" Computers & Geosciences , v.100 , 2017 , p.87

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The National Science Foundation EarthCube program has set out to create an integrated data infrastructure across the Geosciences. One of its key challenges is to enable and simplify scientific data publishing, discovery, access, reuse, and integration. Existing data repositories and networks must be linked, while retaining their independent missions and services to existing disciplinary communities. Cultural, conceptual, and infrastructural heterogeneities must be respected in order to maintain different perspectives, topics, granularities, and differing priorities and thus foster inclusivity in the EarthCube endeavor. At the same time, however, the diversity and heterogeneity of geoscience data presents a significant barrier to its discovery and reuse.

The GeoLink project created cyberinfrastructure within the EarthCube initiative to address these challenges by 1) putting into production an emerging digital publication technique know as "Linked Open Data", combined with 2) an advanced software system capable of understanding the semantics of the data, which lead to 3) a computer system capable of making its own inferences and connections between related pieces of scientific data.

GeoLink enhanced the capabilities for scientists to discover and interpret relevant geoscience data and knowledge. It lowers barriers to cross-repository data discovery and access, while respecting and preserving repository autonomy and heterogeneity. The cyberinfrastructure underlying the approach is extendable, sustainable, and affordable - leveraging state of the art developments in computer science.

The GeoLink infrastructe has led to a measured increase in efficiency regarding data discovery and integration. In addition, the effective integration of computer and geo science researchers is a new area of research in its own right. This project is an example of the type of research that can be accomplished when professionals from diverse disciplines work together toward a shared set of goals. The GeoLink team was comprised of computer, library, and geoscience researchers as well as student researchers at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.


Last Modified: 09/11/2017
Modified by: Thomas W Narock

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