Challenges for Metadata Creation and Discovery in a Multilingual SDI - Facing INSPIRE

The implementation of the INSPIRE Directive will result in a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) covering the 27 Member States of the EU. In this SDI, the Member States are required to create and maintain metadata for spatial data sets corresponding to the 34 themes defined in the INSPIRE Annexes. These metadata can be created using any of the 23 official languages of the EU. Thus, the development of ap-proaches for multi-lingual discovery becomes crucial. In this paper, we present such an approach as well as a number of techniques that help users to choose relevant keywords. At the core of this approach lies a multi-lingual controlled vocabulary, from which users can select keywords both when creating metadata and during discovery. During discovery, terms from this controlled vocabulary are translated into several target languages. The translated terms are used to formulate a query to a Discovery service, which returns metadata records in any of the target languages. While this approach will improve recall and precision (compared to using free-text keywords), further guidance is needed to find ¿good¿ keywords, i.e. key-words that are likely to yield satisfying results. Several techniques are presented that can be used to pro-vide this guidance to users. Relevant keywords can be identified based on semantic similarity measures as well as metadata statistics. Web 2.0 techniques can be used to present keywords to users in an intuitive way and thus help them in their selection. We illustrate the presented approach in a prototype addressing metadata creation and discovery for cross-border environmental planning.

LUTZ Michael;  OSTLAENDER Nicole;  KECHAGIOGLOU Xenia;  CAO Hong Thi Thu; 

2009-11-10

Omni-Press

JRC49073

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC49073,