A generic metadata description for hydrodynamic model data

Sharing of data sets between numerical models is considered an important and pressing issue in the modeling community, because of (i) the time consumed to convert data sets and (ii) the need to connect different types of numerical codes to better map inter-connectedness of aquatic domains. One of the reasons for the data sharing problem arises from the lack of sufficient description of the data, or lack of metadata, which is due to the absence of a standardized framework for these metadata sets. This paper describes the development of a metadata framework for hydrodynamic data descriptions using the Geographic Information Metadata, 19115:2003 standard published by the International Standards Organization (ISO). This standard has been chosen not only because of its extent and adequacy to describe geospatial data, but also because of its widespread use and flexibility to extend the coverage. The latter is particularly important, as further extensions of the metadata standard are needed to provide a comprehensive metadata representation of hydrodynamics and their I/O data. In order to enable the community to share and reuse numerical code data sets, however, they need to be published in both human and machine understandable format. One such format is the Web Ontology language (OWL), whose syntax is compliant with the Extensible Markup Language (XML). In this paper, we present an extensive metadata profile using the available elements of ISO 19115:2003 as well as its extension rules. Based on the metadata profile, an explicit specification or ontology for the model data domain has been created using OWL. The use of OWL not only permits flexibility when extending the coverage but also to share data sets as resources across the internet as part of the Semantic Web. We demonstrate the use of the framework using a two-dimensional finite element code and its associated data sets.