EMODnet Seafloor Geology: The wavy cruise towards a hierarchical, machine-readable geomorphology vocabulary

The European EMODnet Geology project started in 2009. One of its aims is to provide geological map data of the European seas, harmonised as far as possible and made available according to FAIR data principles.

The EMODnet Geology Workpackage “Seafloor Geology” is not only compiling map layers of the geology of the seafloor (Quaternary and pre-Quaternary but is also mapping layers of the geomorphology of the European seas and beyond. Semantic and geometric harmonisation is essential to understand geological information across administrative (EEZ) boundaries. The main method to provide semantically harmonised data layers is common and agreed upon terms to describe a unit: a vocabulary.

To describe the characteristics of the seafloor geology, the vocabularies of the European INSPIRE Directive Data Specifications Geology (INSPIRE Thematic Working group Geology 2013) could be applied to describe the age, lithology and genesis (event environment, event process) of the marine geology.

While the INSPIRE vocabularies are comprehensive, they nevertheless lack terms to describe the marine geomorphological features. EMODnet Geology fills that gap and is developing hierarchical scientific vocabularies for marine geomorphology to describe the concepts to which geometrical descriptions (lines and polygons) can be linked. This controlled vocabulary consists of a hierarchical, machine-readable list of terms and definitions needed to describe the European seafloor geomorphological units.

The process to set up vocabularies for the marine domain faces considerable challenges, such as:

• Finding suitable terms and definitions
• Avoiding duplication
• Agreeing internationally on the terms and description
• Coping with obsolete and/or strictly regional terms
• Considering multiple hierarchies

The presentation demonstrates the project’s approach to build pan-European applicable vocabularies to describe marine geomorphological features and presents use cases for its application.