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Extensions to the Common Vocabularies 

The metadata and data formats are supported by Common Vocabularies that are moderated as part of SeaDataNet by an international governance group and provided as web services and client interface. For Geo-Seas it was necessary to extend these with specific geological and geophysical terms. This was initially achieved by establishing a domain expert group which included representatives from both Geo-Seas and the GeoSciML community. This resulted in additions to the following Common Vocabularies:

  • Parameter Discovery vocabulary.
  • Device Category family.
  • extension of the Device Category family with positioning system terms
  • creation of new semantic mappings

Additional vocabulary terms were identified by the Geo-Seas partners during the population of the Geo-Seas metadata and data. Updating of the Common Vocabularies is currently an ongoing task with new terms being added to the relevant vocabularies as the need arises. All proposed new vocabulary terms are forwarded to the SeaDataNet Vocabularies task manager and, after validation by the content governance group, these new terms are implemented in the Common Vocabularies.

In addition it was necessary to provide classifications for use in geological data files to classify sediment types. This was solved by adopting vocabularies as maintained by the GeoSciML community.