Post on 18-May-2015
Interoperability and standards adoption: FAO’s inputs
a) FAO’s experience in the development and adoption of standardsb) Current SDMX developmentsc) A conjecture: how an e-infrastructure will help
Marc Taconet, Anton Ellenbroek, FAO
Networking sessionSeptember 2010
Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.euD4Science-II project |
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
www.d4science.eu
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a) FAO’s experience in the development and adoption of standards
Various types of standards – FAO either leads development, or adopts specific vocabularies
ASFIS list of species ASFA thesaurus
name space vocabularies AGMES: Agriculture Metadata Element Set FIMES: Fisheries Metadata Element Set
exchange schemas (this later becomes less and less important in the Linked Open Data world)
AGRIS-AP: AGRIS Application Profile FIMES
description languages / methodologies RDF
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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a) FAO’s experience in the development and adoption of standards
Minimum requirements for successful adoption of standards
Involve a “Community of Practice” reaching critical mass, motivated by:
common objective value added services
for Metadata schemas, facilitate adoption: through Mediators
facilitating the articulation of new standard with established practices and standards
provide capacity building in developing countries environments
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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SDMX is used to achieve specific objectives for statistical data exchange:
Describe data providers and their datasets Harmonize often poor and incomplete data and manage
provenance Extract and map codes and hierarchies using semantic
technologies Transform data to reliable SDMX data Manage SDMX data through a registry Disseminate data-sets
b1) Current SDMX developments
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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b1) Current SDMX developments
FAO has gained experience with SDMX ...
... including perception of its limitations
SDMX adaptation is limited by: it’s a complex model, the changing specifications the non-comprehensive toolset the small size of the open source community requires changes to ways we handle code lists:
• e.g. is required formal versioning and historical codelists management
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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b2) enhancing SDMX framework
after 18 months of work on SDMX, including through collaboration with Eurostat,
FAO-FI has taken action at FAO corporate level to overcome
... some of these limitations
Strengthening community of practice OpenSDMX initiated FAO Corporate IT Division now contributes to this effort FAOSTAT3 will strengthen SDMX capabilities in FAO, and
collaborating with FAOSTAT3 through OpenSDMX facilitates corporate level adaptation
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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b2) enhancing SDMX framework
in current FAO infrastructure
Facilitating the articulation of SDMX with established standards:
SDMX capabilities are strengthened with semantic technologies
Flexible, easy to access data structures RDF services to external applications Flexible mapping and transformation services Facilitate machine to machine communication
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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b2) enhancing SDMX framework
More potential for SDMX in D4Science infrastructure
additional mechanisms and services that facilitate third-parties in the implementation of standards
SDMX and XML technologies provide a solid base for the collection and management of observational data
D4cience offers transformation services Reference data management Registries offer discovery and access Integration with geospatial services RDF for machine to machine communication
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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c) a conjecture: how an e-infrastructure will help
Context: evolving business needs
Ecosystem-based fisheries management policy making increasingly based on multi-disciplinary information sources
Opportunities: ever increasing power of e-infrastructures
an ecosystem of data infrastructures enables various communities to cohabitate;
while each community specializes in its own domain, there is incentive to share and use services from other domains.
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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c) a conjecture: how an e-infrastructure will help
A scenario that will facilitate the adoption of standards (1): by bolstering Transformation services that link across
domains, Statistical, Environmental, GeoSpatial, Social, etc. Example: SDMX can support time-series data exchange, species data
could use DarwinCore, AND they could refer to each other
more ecosystem services available will attract more users these users will be “passive” adopters of standards through
mediators Editing interfaces for registering time series in SDMX format Harmonization of vocabularies among existing classifications
the community which shares maintenance and development effort will seek to minimize the number of standards
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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c) a conjecture: how an e-infrastructure will help
A scenario that will facilitate the adoption of standards (2): this move might be facilitated by the intrusion of semantic
web and Linked Open Data (LOD) environments high computing power will facilitate an increased
development of LOD with LOD, adoption of standards focuses more on the
strengthening of vocabularies and resource description framework
in a LOD environment, data exchange schemas loose importance
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)
www.d4science.eu
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For discussion in Networking session
1. Which set of core standards for e-infrastructures which are the major types of standards we think will have
to be handled (eg SDMX, DarwinCore, Spatial standards, ISO19115, ....)
which information domains can SDMX realistically fulfil Statistical time-series Extend to observational data: vessel recordings, trade, species ?
2. Which role for Linked Open Data and RDF framework in e-infrastructures ?
Networking sessionSeptember 2010, Brussels (Belgium)