Revised Ontology Improves United States Water-Quality Data Sharing (Invited)
Abstract
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have each deployed a web-service based water-quality data-retrieval system that uses mutually consistent nomenclature. Users have access to millions of water-quality results from across the United States through these retrieval systems. The new terminology and domains used in this collaboration evolved from related efforts by partnerships with federal, state, and tribal environmental-monitoring programs. The new nomenclature improves on a decades-old model that employed five-digit parameter codes to identify some combination of measurement attributes such as constituent, medium, fraction, units of measure, and measurement method. That approach created a potpourri of parameter codes that did not lend itself easily to identifying or combining the data. The new web system parses these characteristics into separate data elements such as measured characteristic, units of measurement, and physical fraction. The new format simplifies finding measurements of a single type, such as fecal coliform or sulfate, by characterizing the constituents using a shared vocabulary between the USEPA and USGS retrieval systems. The measured constituent is a foundational domain which is embodied by the USEPA Substance Registry System (SRS). The SRS is a database system for tracking standard terms and synonyms for names of chemicals, physical properties, and biological organisms. All database systems explicitly or implicitly impose an ontology on the subject realm. USGS and USEPA have collaborated for decades on water-quality data storage and retrieval systems. The most recent attempt employs more atomistic and universal concepts than previous efforts and improves retrieval of water-quality data for all interested parties.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFMIN44B..03S
- Keywords:
-
- 1831 HYDROLOGY / Groundwater quality;
- 1871 HYDROLOGY / Surface water quality;
- 1904 INFORMATICS / Community standards;
- 1924 INFORMATICS / Formal logics and grammars