Community Device Ontology Team Startup

The Monterey Accelerated Research System illustrates the need for semantic interoperability in sensor systems.

The MMI project has begun a community collaboration to develop a new reference vocabulary, or ontology, for marine sensors and other devices. The effort will include representatives of major observing systems, vocabulary projects, and data systems. They will work together to construct a sophisticated set of terms that are related to each other and to other system concepts.

Intended products include one or more vocabularies whose terms can be referenced as URIs in specifications like SensorML, and that will be resolvable (e.g., through a web browser or an ontology server) to provide additional information as captured by the ontology.

We actively seek participation of those with experience of marine or other environmental devices, to help guide the process and make the results as relevant, accurate, useful, and adopted by the community as possible.