Approaching Cross-Domain Search in Environmental Applications – Towards Linked Data

TaToo – Tagging tool based on a semantic discovery framework, a project funded by the European Commission provides a web-based solution for easy and accurate discovery as well as tagging of environmental resources. The novelty relies on a semantic framework integrating different domain ontologies in a multi-domain and multilingual context. The underlying ontology framework, comprises besides the different domain ontologies (e.g. related to climate change, agro-environmental and anthropogenic impact domains) also concepts and methods to establish a mapping between the domain ontologies and so-called minimal environmental resource model (MERM). Together this forms a suitable and usable bridge ontology allowing a cross-domain discovery by using aligned ontologies concepts from different domains. The clear advantage for the end-user is that he is now able to find relevant information stemming from other domains, (like from impact of pollutant, climate change or temperature on human health) that he would not have found before but would be even more important to him that the ones only from his domain of expertise. The TaToo semantic framework extends cross-domain search evolving towards the Linked Data initiative by providing a linking functionality. The cross-domain search can be extended including in the search results also linked resources.