URI*
|
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
|
Contact*
|
Jonathan Thiry (jonathan.thiry@mgeo.lu.se) Alex Vermeulen (alex.vermeulen@icos-ri.eu)
|
Object creation date property
|
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/created
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/created
|
Submission date
|
May 24, 2026
|
Deprecated
|
false
See more...
|
Description*
|
The ICOS ontology (CPMETA) is an OWL/RDF vocabulary used by the ICOS Carbon Portal to describe and connect metadata about ICOS data products, stations, instruments, people, organizations, projects, and related entities. It supports machine-readable discovery, citation, provenance tracking, and long-term management of immutable data objects in the Carbon Portal metadata system. The ontology includes concepts such as DataObject, DataObjectSpec, Site, Project, and relationships such as a data object “has specification,” linking each archived object to its data type or specification.
In the ICOS Carbon Portal architecture, the actual file bytes are treated as the data object, while everything else—including file name, size, specification, provenance, station context, and collection membership—is metadata. These metadata are represented in RDF, exposed through SPARQL and landing pages, and organized so that immutable, content-hash-identified data objects can be traced to raw data, scientific context, and processing history.
The ICOS ontology (CPMETA) covers several metadata domains needed to describe ICOS Carbon Portal data in a consistent, machine-readable way. These domains include data objects and collections, data object specifications or data types, research stations, roles, and the three ICOS scientific themes: atmosphere, ecosystem, and ocean. In the Carbon Portal model, only the byte content of a file is treated as the data object; all other information, including file name, file size, data type, and collection membership, is metadata. Data objects, document objects, and collections are immutable and identified using a content-based SHA-256 hash prefix.
The architecture is flexible because the metadata system is based on RDF graphs, OWL ontologies, and SPARQL, allowing different metadata domains to be modeled separately while still being queried and integrated together. The metadata server uses configurable InstanceServers, each with its own writable RDF graph and readable graph set. This makes it possible to scope metadata editing to particular domains, object formats, environmental research infrastructures, or applications, while still supporting unified access across graphs.
This flexibility is important because ICOS brings together different scientific communities. The atmosphere, and ocean thematic centers each maintain their own view of stations, and roles, but the Carbon Portal metadata flow continuously imports and harmonizes these updates into a unified ICOS metadata layer. The same core services are also designed to support multiple environmental research infrastructures in one deployment, such as ICOS, SITES, and ICOS Cities, selected by service base URL., OWL vocabulary describing metadata of two environmental research infrastructures: ICOS and SITES, as well as of spin-off project ICOS Cities
See more...
|
Creator
|
|
License
|
|
Representation language*
|
OWL
See more...
|
Object modification date property
|
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/modified
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/modified
|
Preferred namespace prefix
|
cpmeta
See more...
|
Preferred namespace URI
|
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
|
Publisher
|
|
Access URL
|
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
http://meta.icos-cp.eu/ontologies/cpmeta/
|
Creation date*
|
May 24, 2026
|
Status*
|
production
See more...
|
URI Lookup Endpoint
|
https://earthportal.eu/search?ontologies=ICOS&require_exact_match=true&q=
search?ontologies=ICOS&require_exact_match=true&q=
|
Version information
|
1.2
See more...
|
Scroll down to see more