Standardized and semantically enriched observations in the ecology domain - a harmonized solution for supporting scientific theory

Observations are a starting point for supporting a scientific theory. In ecology, both in monitoring or research activities, observations are the pillar of the discipline. In this work we follow a high-level approach where an observation is regarded as any "action whose result is an estimate of the value of some property of the feature-of-interest, at a specific point in time, obtained using a specified procedure" (After Cox 2008 cited by INSPIRE Cross Thematic Working Group on Observations & Measurements, 2011). The aims of our work are: (i) to evaluate implementing rules and technical guidance specifications for the provision of measurement data in the European INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/CE); (ii) to suggest best practices to ecologists that usually are not accustomed to technological practices, in order to share observations with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and to be compliant with other solutions adopted in thousands of European and global projects; (iii) to propose a technological solution, especially for the LTER network, for achieving interoperable interaction among infrastructures, networks, or institutions. These objectives will be sustained by practical examples utilizing real field data, in this manner we will: (i) show how the O&M OGC schema is indicated for ecological observations; (ii) explain, with practical examples and the use of open-source software, how to move from data collection to data provision via international standards; (iii) describe how the types of observations indicated in O&M data model (OM_Measurement, OM_CategoryObservation, OM_CountObservation, OM_TextObservation, OM_TruthObservation, OM_GeometryObservation and OM_SWEArrayObservation) can be used in the field of ecology; (iv) highlight hyperlinking approach (xlink) can enriching the observations with semantic annotation.