Aligning Observable Property Terminologies using the I-ADOPT framework

Abstract

During its lifetime, the RDA WG InteroperAble Descriptions of Observable Property Terminologies (I-ADOPT) developed a semantic framework to represent scientific variables and give a detailed account of what has been measured or otherwise been observed. The framework breaks down complex variable descriptions into essential atomic components, e.g., what quality or quantity kind of which object or phenomenon kind are the subject of the measurement or observation. While the ecological domain served as a starting point, we took into account other domains as part of the development. As a result, the I-ADOPT model is a generic framework to describe observational properties. The recommendations of the IADOPT WG have been published along with several outputs including the I-ADOPT ontology itself and a collection of terminologies to be used as atomic components. The I-ADOPT WG is now in maintenance mode but work is continuing on testing and supporting real-life implementation scenarios. Multiple terminology providers and data repositories have started aligning their variables to the I-ADOPT framework. This results in an increasing number of I-ADOPT-compliant variable descriptions from different stakeholders. We are now ready to test whether one of the main goals of the I-ADOPT WG has actually been achieved: does the I-ADOPT framework enable semantic interoperability of variable descriptions across datasets annotated using different controlled vocabularies? This poster highlights how the I-ADOPT model has been applied to existing terminologies of observational variables, providing detailed semantic context information. We present current efforts to exploit these details while aligning terminologies of different origins. We want to encourage other terminology providers and domains to explore the I-ADOPT framework to grow an increasing network of interoperable terminologies for observational variables.