In this major new UIS project, KarstLink, wide and early participation is important. The project is setting up the infrastructure and recommendations to facilitate the responsible discovery, sharing and use of cave and karst data, one of the core aims of UIS. This is now practical by using the latest Internet standards from W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for Linked Data on the Semantic Web. It will also involve creating a comprehensive ontology and vocabulary describing the data environment of caves and karst, while not duplicating common items in existing ontologies. The project is liaising of course with other organisations interested in cave and karst information.
To make sure that the perspective, experience and requirements, including security, for cavers from all countries, for each karst science discipline, and for cave management are properly allowed for, it is important that each of these groups participate early. As Fadi Nader, UIS General Secretary, put it in his recent letter to country delegates promoting the project: “It is important that the group has wide international participation from both the caving and karst science communities to ensure that its final facilities and recommendations work for everyone.”
The work is already under way, so it is important that interested people from around the world join in without delay to be able to influence its direction from early on. Further details, and links for joining the project’s mailing list and wiki, where the work is being done, can be found on it’s web page:
http://uisic.uis-speleo.org/exchange/karstlink/index-en.html
The work currently in progress is identifying cave/karst-related entities/objects and the relationships between them. A preliminary limited ontology and vocabulary will then be prepared for a data sharing demonstration at next year’s ICS in France. The project scope will then be expanded to cover the full range of cave/karst data. This will include us providing the mechanisms to help each of the above interest groups to identify and peer-review the data fields and their definitions that their databases need to cover their area of interest. These fields will then eventually be incorporated into the ontology and vocabulary.
Peter Matthews, UIS Informatics Commission