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Vocabulary also termed as semantics helps in providing a consistent terminology for communication between different stakeholders including humans and machines for acquisition, processing, archival, dissemination and analysis of Earth Observation data. A common and consistent vocabulary ensures that the end user uses the same term to mean the same thing. Vocabulary acts as a means to support interdisciplinary collaboration between people by helping them become aware of when they may be using the same word in different ways or different words in the same way. A controlled vocabulary is a prescribed list of terms, each representing a concept while a structured vocabulary is an organized set of terms representing concepts and their inter-relationship. Thesaurus is a combination of controlled and structured vocabulary in which concepts are represented by terms and are organized so that relationships between concepts are made explicit and preferred terms are accompanied by their synonyms.
| ID | Recommendations |
|---|---|
| VOCAB#1 | Thesaurus should be the preferred way of implementing vocabulary in an organization. Use ISO 25964-1, 2011 for developing Thesaurus and ISO 25964-2, 2013 to ensure Interoperability with other vocabularies |
| VOCAB#2 | CEOS Common Online Dictionary can be used as a reference for Vocabulary implementation |
| VOCAB#3 | Use existing vocabulary and enrich it by involving a wider community with a balance of centralized and distributed control. |
| VOCAB#4 | The terms used in vocabulary should be consistent and divided into classes such as Base, Core, Controversial and High Impact. The ‘Base Terms’ should have cross community agreement and should not have circular or ambiguous definitions. The ‘Core Term’ should be using the ‘Base Term’ consistently and can be allowed to have minor tweaks with approval from the identified committee. The ‘Controversial Term’ should have qualifiers attached to them with links to discussions, which led to the association of the qualifier. The ‘High Impact Term’ should be approved by a specialist committee and should be linked to a document providing details of the term. |
| VOCAB#5 | Active web links to the standard centralized definition of terms should be used as against the documentary standards providing their own list of references. |
| VOCAB#6 | Vocabulary should have version control and change management at the individual term level and historical and alternative definitions should also be linked to current term definition |
| VOCAB#7 | The terms used in the vocabulary should be interrelated with clear relationships between other terms (parent, sibling, child) avoiding, in particular, circular (child becomes parent) relations. Overlaps between terms that are supposed to delineate more generic concepts (siblings) should be avoided or minimized |
| VOCAB#8 | The vocabulary should have capability to record public comment and discussion and should provide options for adding new terms. |