Approaches to semantic interoperability in the ITINERIS project

Abstract

Strengthening semantic interoperability within interdisciplinary contexts is crucial to facilitate the discovery, (re)use and integration of scientific data by diverse research communities. The Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System (ITINERIS) project coordinates a network of national nodes from 22 Research Infrastructures (RIs) operating mainly in the environmental domain and it represents a perfect interdisciplinarity model to foster the implementation of FAIR semantics.  The main goal of the ITINERIS project is to build a national hub with centralised access to data and services, provided by the participating RIs, to enhance the study of environmental processes in the atmosphere, marine, terrestrial biosphere, and geosphere landsurface domains. In this context, semantic interoperability is crucial to allow the accurate exchange and interpretation of information by both humans and machines. To this aim, a terminology service will be developed and also integrated within the hub to improve semantic interoperability among and within RIs. To design the structure and functioning of the terminology service two actions are being performed: i) a review of existing semantic artefacts and semantic catalogues that will be queried by the terminology service; and ii) the identification of appropriate technological solutions and requirements.  The review of semantic resources produced a collection of 540 semantic artefacts available across 17 semantic catalogues relevant to ITINERIS stakeholders. Moreover, the identified semantic resources were examined to assess some of the key aspects of their FAIRness and to highlight gaps and challenges limiting semantic interoperability.  The technological solutions and requirements were defined by evaluating the state-of-the-art of the existing semantic technologies to provide a lightweight federator that includes existing services and featured functionalities to improve alignments and annotations of semantic resources. The approaches to semantic interoperability adopted within the ITINERIS project, through the integration of internationally-endorsed and FAIR-compliant methodologies, and the implementation of new services, could boost the interdisciplinary data and service interoperability and advance the environmental research at the national level and beyond.