Machine-understandable and processable representation of UNECE standards for meat. Bovine meat - Carcases and cuts case study

Abstract

The paper offers a semantic representation of one of the sixteen UNECE standards for meat. The content of the standard is briefly presented in a natural language. Then, the methodology is discussed. Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) is chosen as the basis of the representation. A limited number of ontological object properties extending SKOS are used to represent relations among beef cuts such as the relation of being prepared from. The advantages of the representation are discussed, especially the possibility of the use of reasoning mechanisms, as well as its flexibility and robustness. This paper also sketches a vision of a larger project aimed at semantic representation of all UNECE meat standards and their joining into a network of Web vocabularies such as Schema.org and GS1. A web application to browse the UNCECE standard for beef and SPARQL endpoint to query it are also provided.