European Environment Agency

Sigfús BjarnasonEEA

Environmental Terminology and Discovery Service

European Environment Agency

To achieve the aims (of the Treaty) to improve Europe’s environment

the EEA shall provide

objective, reliable and comparable information at European level

to policy makers and the public

EEA’s mandate

European Environment Agency

GEMET

• General

• Multilingual

• Environmental

• Thesaurus

• Initial purpose: To (manually) index all sources of environmental data and information in Europe

European Environment Agency

The building of GEMET

• 1996 - 2001

• Merging 8 existing Thesauri

• 5300 terms• in a hierarchical structure

• … and assigned to “themes”#

• including definitions

• 30 languages

• Initially on paper and CD-ROM only

• Now at www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet

European Environment Agency

GEMET

• Has it ever used as originally intended ?• Widely distributed

• Frequently downloaded

• Praised by terminologists

• Used for indexing ??

• Now used more as one terminology source of many linked sources in the EEA Environmental Terminology and Discovery Service

• Our main contribution to information systems based on Linked Data

European Environment Agency

Linked Data

• The basic assumption behind Linked Data is that the value and usefulness of data increases the more it is interlinked with other data. In summary, Linked Data is simply about using the Web to create typed links between data from different sources.

European Environment Agency

GEMET and Linked Data

• Recent work on GEMET has focused on creating links to other thesauri

• We set up exact and close matches to concepts in many other thesauri

• It requires that each included concept has a persistent URL on the Internet

European Environment Agency

Synonyms of GEMET: Pest control

LabelLangua

geConcept

Pest control en http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pest_control

Pest eradication en http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_5726

control of plant parasites en http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4490disinfestation of living organism

en http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_5726

pest control en http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/concept/6139

pest control en http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_5726

pest control methods en http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_5726

plant health treatment en http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4490

spraying of crops en http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4490

treatment of plants en http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4490

weed control en http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4490

European Environment Agency

GEMET in SEIS

• SEIS (A European Shared Environmental Information System) that aims to improve, modernise and streamline environmental information• A distributed, integrated, web-enabled system• A network where public providers share data

and information• Based on existing e-infrastructure, systems

and services at national and EU level

European Environment Agency

• GEMET in legislation• The INSPIRE Directive

“Required” for indexing of spatial data (but optional)

GEMET in global systems• GEOSS (Global Earh Observations Systems of systems)• Eye on Earth (to be launched December 2011)