ESIP 2020 Summer Meeting Ontology Tutorial

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

ESIP Summer Meeting Pre-Conference Event

Introduction to ontologies: enabling collaboration, enhancing interoperability
Co-organized by the ESIP Semantics Technology Committee and Agriculture and Climate Cluster

Overview. Deriving transdisciplinary solutions that are responsive to complex socio-environmental challenges require, as stated in ESIP’s mission statement, linking “observation, research, application, education and use of Earth science”. One of the motivations behind the FAIR Principles (for scientific data management and stewardship) is enhancing machine-augmented capabilities to help researchers and practitioners find relevant data and information across “traditional” silos. The aim of this tutorial is to provide participants with an overview of the role ontologies play in enhancing collaboration across these silos.

Outcomes. The tutorial is meant to:

  • help participants understand the value of developing robust descriptions of processes, and harmonizing variable names in code, models, data products, and publications; and
  • learn how concept maps can be used to help model knowledge.


Time and date. 2020-07-13 (Monday) | 1200 hrs US eastern daylight time (GMT-4) | 3.5 hours (inclusive of a brief break)

Instructors. The tutorial will be jointly delivered by Drs. Anne Thessen (Oregon State University) and Pier Buttigieg (Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration / GEOMAR).

For ESIP 2020 summer meeting participants. This tutorial provides preparatory background for the following two sessions:


Presentation Slides.


Recorded Zoom Session. The playback can be accessed here.