Observations Task Group Agenda

Observations Task Group meeting
1400 - 1700, Sunday October 19
TDWG 2008, Freemantle, Australia

Session Goals

The goal of the Observations Task Group, as defined by our charter, is to produce a specification to be used to model and exchange observational data from various scientific disciplines that are relevant to TDWG. This is the first working meeting of the Observations Task Group, and thus our goal is to introduce the problems we are trying to solve, to review existing and related work, to discuss possible mechanisms for moving forward with work over the course of the next year, and finally to establish a roadmap that charts the trajectory of our work for the next year.

Background reading

• Madin J, S Bowers, M Schildhauer, S Krivov, D Pennington, F Villa. (2007) An ontology for describing and synthesizing ecological observation data. Ecological Informatics 2 (3): 279-296. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.ecoinf.2007.05.004
• Madin J. S., Bowers S., Schildhauer M., and Jones M. B. 2008. Advancing ecological research with ontologies. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23 (3): 159-168. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.tree.2007.11.007
• Williams RJ, Martinez ND, Golbeck J. (2006) Ontologies for ecoinformatics. Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 4: 237–242. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.websem.2006.06.002

Agenda

• Introduction
  • Matthew Jones: Overview of the Observations Task Group goals and existing models
    • Discussion of goals
  • Participant Introductions
  • Josh Madin: Comparing existing observational data models (OBOE, EML, O&M, Seronto, ODM, etc.)
    • Discussion of existing models
  • Mark Schildhauer: Community relevance through real applications: SONet, Semtools, and more

• Discussion: working towards an observational data specification

• Creating the Observations Task Group Roadmap
  • Tasks
  • Milestones
  • Work Plan