Title: Towards a semantic framework for exploiting heterogeneous environmental data

Authors: Ba-Huy Tran; Alain Bouju; Christine Plumejeaud-Perreau; Vincent Bretagnolle

Addresses: L3i Laboratory, Université de La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France ' L3i Laboratory, Université de La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France ' LIENSs Laboratory - UMR 7266, CNRS & Université de La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France ' Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372, CNRS & Université de La Rochelle, F-79360 Villiers-en-Bois, France

Abstract: This paper presents the 'Environment and landscape geo-knowledge' (GEMINAT) project which aims to build an infrastructure favouring the cross-analysis of spatio-temporal heterogeneous data sources recorded at the Chizé environmental observatory since 1994. From a case study, we summarise the difficulties encountered by biologists and ecologists when maintaining and analysing collected environmental data, essentially the spatial organisation of the landscape, crop rotation, and wildlife data. We show how a framework which uses a spatio-temporal ontology as a semantic mediator can solve challenges related to the analysis and maintenance of these heterogeneous data.

Keywords: data integration; spatio-temporal ontology; ecology; semantics; environmental data; infrastructure; data analysis; landscape spatial organisation; crop rotation; wildlife data.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSO.2016.081586

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, 2016 Vol.11 No.3, pp.191 - 205

Received: 03 Jun 2016
Accepted: 02 Oct 2016

Published online: 16 Jan 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article