One step beyond: The rocky path towards the new GSEU lithology vocabularies

Harmonisation of geological data, both semantically and geometrically, is key to foster the understanding of geological information across national borders. Hereby, the multitude of national borders in Europe, coupled with the intensity of geological mapping efforts, present a considerable challenge.

The building of geological databases for Europe started in 1995 with the project of the International Geological Map of Europe and Adjacent Areas (IGME 5000). For the first time a spatial geological database for the entire Europe was built which covered Europe’s on-shore and off-shore regions. The project was finished in 2005, and the map database is available online since 2006. In 2007, the European INSPIRE Directive came into force requiring standardized data availability within a pan-European geodata infrastructure of 34 themes, including geology, according to common standards and data specifications/vocabularies. The INSPIRE geology data specifications/vocabulary were based on those developed by the OneGeology-Europe project (OneG-E ) which had the aim to make European geological data interoperable, harmonize them as far as possible and make them available for free according to the FAIR data principles. One of the vocabularies described the lithology of rock units.

While these past projects were comprehensive, they showed a lack of
a) vocabularies to describe detailed spatial databases (e.g. geology), and
b) thematic properties such as anthropogenic units, lithotectonic features, metamorphic and textural features, etc.

In 2022, within the EU Horizon Europe programme, the project GSEU (Geological Service for Europe) started to build a geological framework. This encompasses to build a pan-European data model, a metadata system, methods to visualize 3-D models and the creation of hierarchical machine-readable vocabularies based on the earlier IGME 5000, OneG-E and INSPIRE Geology terminology.

Within GSEU, hierarchical scientific vocabularies for lithology, anthropogenic deposits and lithotectonic units are being set up for defining the concepts to which geometrical descriptions (lines, polygons, and volumes) can be linked. In future, these vocabularies will be made available in several languages to scientists in the field and in the office settings so that they can add the proper name to their mapped rock types in a harmonized way. This poster is focussing on the development of the lithology vocabularies.

The main challenges the endeavour is facing are:

• to set up vocabularies that take into account differing nomenclatures which classify the same concept (term),
• to cope with obsolete and strictly regional terms,
• to take into account multiple hierarchies and
• to include genetically related terms, qualifiers and compound names.

Custom programming scripts, written in Python and JavaScript help to automatise the data handling and visualisation of the hierarchical relations of the lithology concepts.

The poster presents the historical background of building pan-European geological vocabularies, demonstrates graphically the actual status of the created GSEU lithology vocabulary and provides an outlook to the future development.