A Classification Scheme for a General Multilingual Thesaurus for the Environment

In 1991, a project has been started by an international working group to build a general thesaurus for the environment in the context of an initiative of the European Environmental Agency. The development of a suitable classification scheme for the new thesaurus will include a comparison with the classification schemes of the UNEP Thesaurus (1990), of the Umweltbundesamt Umweltklassifikation (1994), of the MOPU Tesauro de medio ambiente (1990). It is foreseen that a matrix classification scheme with a thematic and a functional (faceted) axis will be used for the classification of the terms. The expected classification scheme will be in the form of a set of classes, subclasses and top terms defining a lexicon of about 1000 general terms. This classification scheme is going to be used for data entry and information retrieval in databases of environmental data, like the CDS, Catalogue of Data Sources of the European Agency.