metsÄntutkimuslaitos skogsforskningsinstitutet finnish forest research institute expert evaluation...

METSÄNTUTKIMUSLAITOS

SKOGSFORSKNINGSINSTITUTET

FINNISH FOREST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

www.metla.fi

Expert evaluation

Jarmo Saarikko (Metla team)

NEFIS WP5 meeting

Hamburg 15.11.2004

Saarikko for NEFIS WP5 / Hamburg 15.11.2004 METSÄNTUTKIMUSLAITOS



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Particular points on metadata (D3)• Naming standards - usage• Element refinements - usage• Encoding Schemes• Themes• Metadata entry and control




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Naming standards• Spelling of names is important. “Name” is

fixed, all other properties of DC entities can be translated etc.

• Spelling of term Names seems inconsistent between the Metadata Schema and Metadata Guidelines as well as with DCMI

– Name “quality report” is “qualityReport”

• Not all Terms used in Guidelines are in Schema: NEFISrefinements are missing?

• Start using namespaces in the documentation!




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Element Refinements • are properties of a resource (like

Elements)• Element Refinements can alternatively

be used in metadata records independently of the properties they refine

• In DCMI practice, an Element Refinement refines just one parent DCMI property




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Encoding Scheme• provides contextual information or parsing

rules that aid in the interpretation of a term value

• contextual information– controlled vocabularies,– formal notations, or – parsing rules.

• Without an encoding scheme specifically designated, a subject which might very well be carefully selected from a controlled vocabulary cannot be distinguished from a simple keyword.




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DCMI Type Vocabulary• A general, cross-domain list of

recommended terms • May be used as values for the Resource

Type element • To identify the genre of a resource • The member terms of the DCMI Type

Vocabulary are called Vocabulary Terms• http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/dcmitype/




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NEFIS Vocabulary and term lists• The work done is very good in the

selected themes, although there is some overlap

• Work should be continued towards a forest thesaurus or forest ontology – as suggested




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Nominated terms – procedure?• the procedure to handle nominations

should be created before collecting such terms

• Perhaps more descriptive terms for this could be – Name: “suggestedTerm"– Label: "Suggested Terms”




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NEFISthemes are overlapping• Economics Inventory and Economics • Stand

establishment Silviculture and Operations

• Forest typesVegetation andEnvironment & Ecology

• Forest damages Health, Fire and Environement & Ecology

• Wood Forest products and Wood fuel

• Institutions Research and Forest institutions

• Policy Rural development and Policy




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Some NEFISthemes are METHODS• These are not really SUBJECT themes:

– "Maps and georeferenced data" – "Field Experiment"

• Alternatives labels for these themes: – "Cartography" or "Geomatics" – "Research"




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Metadata entry• Using Word documents did not really

teach the correct structure or coding of metadata elements

• Someone has to manually enter the data into a database?

• Guidance to the ‘entry tool’ was not clear– e.g. handling multiple items




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Metadata control• The destination of the provided

metadata was unclear• Who owns the metadata?• Who can modify or delete the metadata

and how?• Can the moderator of records be

changed?• Batch or manual upload?




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Metadata guidelines (D5)• In general the guidelines were readable

and provided enough examples• However, there was some lack of

consistency over terms and values• Guidance to the element “Subject”

was unclear and confusing




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Element listing• For further versions of the Guidelines

– the element listing in the beginning should be expanded to cover both elements and element refinements

– these should be listed independently in the Guide as is the new policy of DCMI

– The Guidelines could group and list the mandatory elements first




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Subject - general• The descriptions, cross-references and

examples are confusing and diffcult to understand or apply

• nominatedTerms– The special case of using normal

metadata descriptions for term suggestions to an edited thesaurus may be quite confusing

– the process has to be extremely clearly explained and documented




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Subject – encoding schemes• Authority files should be compiled into a

registry of recommended encoding schemes• Encodings for habitats /sites should be added

– CORINE – NATURA2000 (EUR 25, 2003)– A classification of Palaearctic habitats (1995)– European vegetation types, the Nordic

Countries (2000)• Recommend one classification scheme

(e.g. GFDC as it is developed for forestry)




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Contextual consistency• There are references to a “metadata

entry tool” e.g. when describing “Nominated Terms”

• This is a guide to the metadata • There should be a separate technical

document on the entry tool




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Dublin Core numbers• 18 elements• 33 refinements• 12 controlled vocabulary terms• 17 vocabulary and encoding schemes• 10 other schemes




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Usability of the documentation• The deliverables were set up in a clear

and concise way and were easy to follow• For easiness of file management, the

vocabularies should have been provided as two files and given a version number

• There should be a separate technical document for the metadata entry tool (be it Word or something else)




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Quality• European Schoolnet has dealt with this

topic extensively• European Treasury Browser

– ETB recommendations on quality criteria (2001)

– ETB deals with metadata, interoperability, multilinguality, has a thesaurus, etc.

– http://etb.eun.org/etb/




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Namespaces• For easiness of documentation and

interoperability• List all namespaces used by Nefis project• Document the namespace for each of the

element and qualifier names used by Nefis• Variable Names in dataset metadata should be

listed in a separate namespace• see: FML




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FML – forest markup language• D3 described requirements for a deeper

metadata structure than the “Core” elements (used for describing datasets)

• FML Scheme and its possible modules and namespaces can solve this problem

• This provides the required interoperability

metsÄntutkimuslaitos skogsforskningsinstitutet finnish forest research institute expert evaluation...

Documents

nefis wp5 hamburg

forest ontology

forest thesaurus

geomatics research slide

nefis vocabulary

policy slide

suggested slide

control slide