Observable Properties

Abstract

A general purpose ontology for observable properties. The ontology supports description of both qualitative and quantitative properties. The allowed scale or units of measure may be specified. A property may be linked to substances-or-taxa and to features or realms, if they play a role in the definition. This ontology was developed to enable publication of a vocabulary of water quality properties for the Bioregional Assessments and eReefs projects. This ontology extends the QUDT schema. Some key classes and properties are linked to SKOS, so that instances of an observable-property vocabulary are implicitly also SKOS concepts, and may be accessed through general purpose vocabulary APIs based on SKOS.