The InteroperAble Descriptions of Observable Property Terminology WG (I-ADOPT WG), operating under the auspices of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Vocabulary and Semantic Services Interest Group, has developed a common method to systematically express or represent observable properties. Through utilization of the I-ADOPT Ontology, the concepts that comprise observable properties can be disaggregated, enabling both comparability across diverse vocabulary services exposing observable properties as well as easier identification of applicable observable properties. This will greatly simplify the identification of relevant datasets across diverse domains.
This spring, FAIRiCUBE was involved in organizing two workshops on the utilization of I-ADOPT, assuring consistency across usage areas. These workshops were run in late February and early March 2025 at the Natural History Museum (NHM) and Austrian Environment Agency (UBA) respectively. The core goals of these workshops were:
- Progress on aligning observable properties from the following domains to the I-ADOPT model:
- Marine data
- Freshwater data
- Biodiversity data
- Meteorological data
- Better understand I-ADOPT in an observational context through alignment with the OGC Observations, Measurements and Samples standard (ISO 19156)
- Initiate work on creation of an LLM that can automatically decompose existing observable properties to the I-ADOPT structure
Together with international experts, both from the mentioned environmental domains as well as semantic experts, we made progress both at detailing the mechanisms involved in I-ADOPT variable decomposition as well as increasing the set of available I-ADOPT variables.
We are convinced that the application of this approach across observable property vocabularies will greatly enhance the ability of scientists to correctly identify and access data of relevance to them.