1 of 20

Why organize data sharing?

Karst environment

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

2 of 20

What's the problem ?

As I walked around I discovered a cave, bats kept coming and going

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

3 of 20

What's the problem ?

I took down the coordinates, took photos and made a sound recording. Now I wonder what will I do with this information?

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

4 of 20

What's the problem ?

I know 4 organisations that collect data on bats and I do not want to transmit this information 4 times.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

5 of 20

What's the problem ?

Could it be possible that I transmit this information to a database and that it transmits my information to the other organisations which are interested in this information?

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

6 of 20

What's the problem ?

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

Could it be possible that from this database I can determine which bat I have observed?

7 of 20

What's the problem ?

It would be nice if I could also associate this observation with a cave and thus know its name, know who has the key, and find information concerning it.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

8 of 20

What's the problem ?

Databases on caves are numerous, it would be necessary to be able to interrogate them all in order to find those which have information on this cave

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

9 of 20

What's the problem ?

Besides, these databases also need to be linked with other databases that provide the information we need.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

10 of 20

What's the solution?

Karst environment

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

11 of 20

What's the solution?

Tim Berners-Lee developed the principles for organising data sharing 20 years ago. These principles have now become international standards set by the W3C.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

12 of 20

What's the solution?

The semantic web is a set of tools and languages that help organise data sharing. This is an evolution of the web which is sometimes called Web 3.0

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

13 of 20

What's the solution?

These tools are already used by search engines to display content from other sites.

They use rules they have developed within the schema.org group.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

14 of 20

What's the solution?

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - Nov. 2019

Many projects already use the semantic web to make their data available. Some of this data interests us

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

15 of 20

What's the solution?

Mammoth cave

coordinate location

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2666855

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P625

To understand how it works: each object has a unique address (a URI).

In the same way each relation that the element has with other elements also has a URI

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

16 of 20

What's the solution?

Mammoth cave

We can thus create links between all the elements:

Mammoth cave is in Kentucky, which is in the United States of America.

Even if we did not indicate it at the start, it is possible to automatically deduce that Mammoth cave is located in the United States of America.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

17 of 20

What's the solution?

Numerous databases have thus created links between them, which makes it possible to reach information which was unknown before.

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

18 of 20

What is Karstlink?

Karst environment

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

19 of 20

How are we going?

We have set up an international collaboration within UIS whose name is KarstLink.

The immediate aim is to present at the 18th UIS Congress in 2021 a preliminary version of:

  • A preliminary ontology (vocabulary) to describe all the objects associated with karst.
  • Linked sites sharing data using this ontology.

For more information and to participate in the project go to:

purl.org/karstlink

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020

20 of 20

How are we going?

We are holding a round table at the 5th Assembly of the Karst Environment [ANEK 2020] in Bourg en Bresse (FR) on Saturday April 4 from 5pm to 6.30pm.

Program and registration on the FFS website:

https://ffspeleo.fr/assises-environnement-karstique-289-469.html

Eric Madelaine - Frédéric Urien - March 2020