Observatories of Seas Ontology (OSO)

📖 Overview

OSO (Observatories of Seas Ontology) provides a semantic framework to describe marine research infrastructures, with a focus on deep-sea observatories operated by EMSO-ERIC and national nodes like EMSO-France.

Version 0.16 (published on August 1st, 2025) improves syntax compliance, FAIRness, and semantic alignment with existing vocabularies and data standards.

📂 Access

• Ontology IRI: https://w3id.org/earthsemantics/OSO
• Documentation (HTML): https://emso-eric.github.io/oso-ontology/
• WebVOWL Visualisation of the OSO Ontology: https://service.tib.eu/webvowl/#iri=https://earthportal.eu/ontologies/OSO

🧭 Objectives

• To provide a common vocabulary for describing marine observatories and their components.
• To enhance interoperability of data across European marine research infrastructures.
• To support data publication and discovery in FAIR-compliant data portals.
• To align with existing ontologies and standards (SOSA, DCAT, GeoSPARQL, PROV-O).

✨ Highlights of version 0.16

• Ontology IRI: https://w3id.org/earthsemantics/OSO/0.16
• Published on August 1st, 2025
• Improved syntax compliance (spaces, punctuation, consistent dcterms: usage)
• CSR alignement added
• Enriched multilingual metadata and annotation properties
• New and updated instances for sites and platforms
• FAIR score: 62% (according to O'FAIRe) — with targeted improvements under way

📋 FAIRisation Roadmap

This ontology is being progressively aligned with the FAIR principles using the O'FAIRe evaluation framework.

🧪 Current FAIR score (updated dynamically): View OSO FAIRness score on EarthPortal

See FAIR-roadmap-OSO.md for the detailed action plan.

We welcome feedback and contributions to improve its FAIRness over time.

📦 Download & Examples

You can explore these resources directly or import them into ontology editors such as Protégé using their respective IRI.

• Turtle (.ttl): https://w3id.org/earthsemantics/OSO/0.15

• RDF/XML (.rdf): https://earthportal.eu/ontologies/OSO.rdf

• OWL/XML (.owl): https://earthportal.eu/ontologies/OSO.owl

• CSV export: https://earthportal.eu/ontologies/OSO.csv

• Version diff: https://earthportal.eu/ontologies/OSO.diff

• 📊 Download extracted tabular view (Excel):
  OSO_RF_Site_Platform_Filtered_EMSO_20250723.xlsx

• 🌐 View or explore on EarthPortal
  (Supports interactive browsing of classes, properties, and individuals)

🧬 Structure & Key Concepts

• Hierarchical model:
  RegionalFacility → Site → SubSite → Platform → SubPlatform

• Key classes:
  RegionalFacility, Site, SubSite, Platform, SubPlatform, ResearchInfrastructure, Organisation, Project, Cruise, Discipline, Person, Geometry, BoundingBox

• Ontology aligns with and reuses concepts from:

  • dcterms: (Dublin Core Terms)
  • foaf: (Friend of a Friend)
  • schema: (Schema.org)
  • geo: and wgs84_pos: (Geospatial vocabularies)
  • sosa: / ssn: (Sensors and observations)
  • prov: (Provenance ontology)
  • cerif: (Common European Research Information Format)

🤝 Contribute / Contact

For feedback, suggestions or to contribute, feel free to:

• Open a GitHub issue
• Contact the EMSO DMSG team: 📧 [email protected]

📝 License

This ontology is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
Please cite or attribute the EMSO ERIC team when reusing.