Matching SKOS thesauri for spatial data infrastructures

Abstract

This paper outlines the importance of the SKOS format for developing thesauri in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures and presents a prototype application supporting one of the most important tasks for the harmonisation of thesauri in this domain, i.e., relating independent categorisations of terms that may be developed by distinct thematic communities of interest. This work outlines the main sources for SDI-related thesauri that are currently available and addresses the many challenges that shall be tackled in order to streamline the development process associated with these resources. The paper also describes the possible usages of these semantics-aware data structures for the purpose of resource annotation by metadata maintainers and query expansion processes for supporting the end user. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.