A geologic timescale ontology and service | Earth Science Informatics Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

A geologic timescale ontology and service

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Earth Science Informatics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We have developed an OWL ontology for the geologic timescale, derived from a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model that formalized the practice of the International Commission for Stratigraphy (ICS) (Cox and Richard 2005). The UML model followed the ISO/TC 211 modeling conventions, and was the basis for an XML implementation that was integrated into GeoSciML 3.0. The OWL ontology is derived using rules for generating OWL ontologies from ISO-conformant UML models, as provided in a (draft) standard from ISO/TC 211. The basic ontology is also aligned with SKOS to allow multilingual labels, and to enable delivery through a standard vocabulary interface. All versions of the International Stratigraphic Chart from 2004 to 2014 have been encoded using the ontology. Following ICS practice, the elements of the timescale retain the same identifiers across the multiple versions, though the information describing each geochronologic unit evolves with the versions of the timescale. The timescales are published through multiple web interfaces and APIs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.stratigraphy.org

  2. These standards are currently in revision, in part to improve alignment with OWL implementations, see ISO/DIS 19103 (ISO/TC-211 2014b) and ISO/DIS 19109 (ISO/TC-211 2013).

  3. http://def.seegrid.csiro.au/isotc211/iso19108/2002/temporal, http://def.seegrid.csiro.au/isotc211/iso19156/2011/sampling

  4. See http://resource.geosciml.org/ontology/timescale/rank which includes Super-Eon, Eon, Era, Period, Sub-Period, Epoch, Age.

  5. http://stratigraphy.org/GSSP/index.html

  6. http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-chart-timescale

  7. https://www.seegrid.csiro.au/wiki/CGIModel/GeologicTime#ICS_Stratigraphic_Chart

References

  • Beckett D, Berners-Lee T, Prud’hommeaux E, Carothers G (2014) RDF 1.1 Turtle. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-turtle-20140225/. Accessed 15 May 2014

  • Berrueta D, Phipps J (2008) Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-vocab-pub/. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • Bizer C, Lehmann J, Kobilarov G et al (2009) DBpedia - a crystallization point for the Web of data. Web Semant 7:154–165. doi:10.1016/j.websem.2009.07.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen KM, Finney SC, Gibbard PL et al (2013) The ICS international chronostratigraphic chart. Episodes 36:199–204

    Google Scholar 

  • Cox SJD (2013) An explicit OWL representation of ISO/OGC Observations and Measurements. In: Corcho O, Henson C, Barnaghi P (eds) Proc. 6th Int. Work. Semant. Sens. Networks co-located with 12th Int. Semant. Web Conf. (ISWC 2013). Sun SITE Central Europe, Sydney, Australia, October 22nd, 2013., pp 1–18. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1063/paper1.pdf. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • Cox SJD, Richard SM (2005) A formal model for the geologic time scale and global stratotype section and point, compatible with geospatial information transfer standards. Geosphere 1:119. doi:10.1130/GES00022.1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox SJD, Richard SM (2014) RDF representation of International Chronostratigraphic Chart (Geologic Timescale). doi: 10.4225/08/537452F354E36

  • Cox SJD, Yu J, Rankine T (2014) A Linked Data API for SKOS vocabularies. Semant. Web J. submitted:

  • Fils D, Cervato C, Reed J et al (2009) CHRONOS architecture: experiences with an open-source services-oriented architecture for geoinformatics. Comput Geosci 35:774–782. doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2008.02.035

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gradstein FM, Ogg JG, Smith AG (2005) Geologic time scale 2004. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs JR, Pan F (2006) Time Ontology in OWL. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-time/. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • ISO/IEC (2005) ISO/IEC 19501:2005 - Information technology -- Open Distributed Processing -- Unified Modeling Language (UML) Version 1.4.2. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2002) ISO 19108:2002 - Geographic information -- Temporal schema. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2005a) ISO/TS 19103:2005 - Geographic information -- Conceptual schema language. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2005b) ISO 19109:2005 - Geographic information -- Rules for application schema. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2011) ISO 19156:2011 - Geographic information -- Observations and measurements. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2013) ISO/DIS 19109:2013 - Geographic information -- Rules for application schema. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2014a) ISO/DIS 19150-2:2014 - Geographic information -- Ontology -- Part 2: Rules for developing ontologies in the Web Ontology Language (OWL). International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • ISO/TC-211 (2014b) ISO/DIS 19103 - Geographic information -- Conceptual schema language. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva

  • Ma X, Fox P (2013) Recent progress on geologic time ontologies and considerations for future works. Earth Sci Informa 6:31–46. doi:10.1007/s12145-013-0110-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma X, Carranza EJM, Wu C et al (2011) A SKOS-based multilingual thesaurus of geological time scale for interoperability of online geological maps. Comput Geosci 37:1602–1615. doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2011.02.011

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma X, Carranza EJM, Wu C, van der Meer FD (2012) Ontology-aided annotation, visualization, and generalization of geological time-scale information from online geological map services. Comput Geosci 40:107–119. doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2011.07.018

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miles A, Bechhofer S (2009) SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • Murphy M, Salvador A (1994) International Stratigraphic Guide - Abridged Edition. International Commission for Stratigraphy and Geological Society of America

  • Object Management Group (2009) Ontology Definition Metamodel - Version 1.0. Object Management Group, Needham, Mass. USA. http://www.omg.org/spec/ODM/1.0/. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • Perrin M, Mastella LS, Morel O, Lorenzatti A (2011) Geological time formalization: an improved formal model for describing time successions and their correlation. Earth Sci Informa 4:81–96. doi:10.1007/s12145-011-0080-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raskin RG, Pan MJ (2005) Knowledge representation in the semantic web for Earth and environmental terminology (SWEET). Comput Geosci 31:1119–1125. doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2004.12.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Remane J, Bassett MG, Cowie JW et al (1996) Revised guidelines for the establishment of global chronostratigraphic standards by the international commission on stratigraphy (ICS). Episodes 19:77–81

    Google Scholar 

  • Richard SM, CGI-Interoperability-Working-Group (2007) GeoSciML – A GML Application for Geoscience Information Interchange. In: Soller D (ed) Digit. Mapp. Tech.’06 — Work. Proceedings, USGS Open File Rep. 2007-1285. United States Geological Survey, Columbus, OH., pp 47–59. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1285/pdf/Richard.pdf. Accessed 28 February 2014

  • Shergold JH, Cooper RA (2005) The Cambrian period. A geol. Time scale 2004. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • W3C OWL Working Group (2012) OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Document Overview (Second Edition). World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/. Accessed 28 February 2014

Download references

Acknowledgments

Parts of this work were funded by AuScope under the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Terry Rankine and Jacqui Githaiga (CSIRO), and Stuart Williams (Epimorphics) assisted with the SISSvoc interface implementation. Doug Fils (ODP), Marshall Ma (RPI), Jonathan Yu (CSIRO), and Stephan Zednik (RPI), provided useful comments on the use and publication of RDF/OWL. Jim Ogg and Felix Gradstein of ICS provided some advice about the timescale structure. Guillaume Duclaux and Jonathan Yu (CSIRO) helped clarify some aspects of the paper in review. SJDC would like to pay tribute to the late W.B. Harland, who introduced the challenges of formalizing stratigraphy and the timescale in the undergraduate curriculum at Cambridge.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Land and Water, Highett, Vic., Australia

    S. J. D. Cox

  2. Arizona Geologic Survey, Tucson, AZ, USA

    S. M. Richard

Authors
  1. S. J. D. Cox
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. S. M. Richard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. J. D. Cox.

Additional information

Communicated by: H. A. Babaie

Published in the Special Issue Semantic eScience with Guest Editors Dr. Xiaogang Ma, Dr. Peter Fox, Dr. Thomas Narock and Dr. Brian Wilson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cox, S.J.D., Richard, S.M. A geologic timescale ontology and service. Earth Sci Inform 8, 5–19 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-014-0170-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-014-0170-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation