1. Working Or Special Interest Group Title

1. Working or Special Interest Group title: Semantic Infrastructure Working Group 2. Statement of Purpose The purpose of the Semantic Infrastructure Working Group is to facilitate and communicate the use of semantic technologies in EarthCube's infrastructure activities. This working group will focus on the EarthCube Technology and Architecture Standing Committee (TAC) goal to facilitate the development of the technology component of EarthCube, particularly by facilitating alignment of EarthCube funded projects to foster technology integration, and in collaboration with the TAC GAP Analysis Working Group, identifying gaps in coverage of needed cyberinfrastructure capabilities, and determining recommendations on how to fill those gaps. Many existing and proposed EarthCube elements (and their end users) need or can benefit from core semantic services, including access to semantic information and resources, and many elements provide semantic services that could be used by other components or the larger community. At the same time, there is no active cross-cutting consideration of semantic requirements, opportunities and capabilities. It is in EarthCube's interest to identify service needs and opportunities, find ways to meet those needs, and represent its developed capabilities to their full advantage across the EarthCube program, to its scientific users and technical developers. For example, one potential need highlighted during the EarthCube Tech Hands meeting is a common-use semantic repository. The WG will draw on the collection of EarthCube projects and products, and also on previous and ongoing developments in the cyberinfrastructure and geosciences community, as listed in Section 10. Activities The WG will:  Identify and document existing semantic activities and services being pursued by EarthCube projects;  Identify the baseline needs for core semantic services across the EarthCube program, and benefits of those services;  Make recommendations for the most effective options to meet those needs, including engaging with external semantic initiatives as appropriate;  Identify opportunities for internal alignment of EarthCube project’s semantic practices; and  Facilitate, where practical as an initial study, the alignment of the EarthCube community’s semantic practices with those developed external to EarthCube, including with respect to Linked Open Data. End goal and deliverables:

 A summary of EarthCube's semantic resources and products, identifying alignment opportunities and strategies;  A summary of the opportunities and needs of the EarthCube semantic community, and recommendations for the cyberinformation community toward meeting those needs;  Recommendations on semantic developments for future EarthCube activities and approaches to improve alignment and mutual understanding across scientific and technical communities. 3. Founding Members

3a. Name, affiliation and email address of WG/SIG chair Name: John Graybeal Affiliation: Marine Metadata Interoperability Email: [email protected]

3b. Name, affiliation, and email address of at least 2 additional founding participants Name: Ruth Duerr (Co-Chair) Affiliation: NSIDC Email: [email protected] Name: Bob Arko (Co-Chair) Affiliation: LDEO Email: [email protected] Name: Gary Berg-Cross (Co-Chair) Affiliation: Ontolog Email: [email protected]

Additional Participants Benjamin Gross, Mostafa Elag, Yolanda Gil, Joe Futrelle, Jeffrey Grethe, David Arctur, Matthew Mayernik 4. Operational timeline From: 09/15/2015 To: 06/15/2016 Editor’s Note: This timeline has been revised from the original proposal (06/01/2015 to 02/29/2016) to reflect the actual kickoff meeting date, 9/17/2015. Milestone dates below reflect the revised timeline. 5 Are funds required to support WG? No. 6. Briefly describe alignment with EarthCube goals and/or Committee/Team priorities The WG will coordinate with other EarthCube working groups such as Technical Gap Analysis, Testbed, Standards, and Architecture working groups to develop synergies and cross-cutting recommendations. The WG will coordinate with all existing and proposed EarthCube projects, and will actively seek participation by, and review from, EarthCube projects with semantic elements. Schedule and Milestones Work will be maintained on the EarthCube group workspace, allowing community review and engagement throughout the working span of the WG. Assuming a start date of September 15, the Product milestones will be as follows (with elapsed time in months). Interim releases may also be made available.  Initial draft of semantics requirements and products summary: October 15, 2015 (1 month)  Review drafts of deliverable documents: April 15, 2016 (6 months)  Community engagement activity(ies): May 15, 2016 (7 months)  Final release of deliverable documents: June 15, 2016 (9 months) 7. Meeting mechanisms and expected frequency Monthly meetings via webex; an in-person meeting may be attached to a major conference like AGU. 8. Expected time commitments and levels of involvement Contributions as provided by WG participants (volunteers). 9. Risk assessment (what might lead to failure, how to mitigate those risks) In all the following, a fundamental assumption is that the WG will pursue its work on a best-effort basis, seeking ready consensus rather than a wide range of authoritative decisions. The WG participants believe many benefits can be achieved on this basis; if this proves untrue, the WG can conclude its work by simply reporting that reality. Risk: Lack of participation. If too few people participate, or people participate with too few hours, deliverables will not be produced, or may not be comprehensive or conclusive, and buy-in to the recommendations will be reduced. Mitigation: Scope must be carefully managed to avoid overload, by limiting our goals to the most achievable; contributions must be distributed across the team (e.g., with 3 co-leads); meeting time must be carefully budgeted; and deliverables must be efficiently produced. Participation must be actively encouraged, through announcements, status reports, and on-line information on the EarthCube wiki, and the wiki must contain enough information for new participants to quickly come up to speed. (See also next risk.) Risk: Non-representative participation. If participation over-represents particular teams, experience, or technology perspectives, the resulting recommendations could be so biased as to be unconvincing, or ineffective if followed. Mitigation: Active recruitment of underrepresented, non-traditional, and differing viewpoints (n.b.: science users; non-semantic project members; non-EarthCube specialists; individuals with differing views), and ‘outside’ experts (from other projects and earlier EarthCube semantic analyses) for discussions, presentations, and reviews. Risk: Inability to reach consensus. For complex, high-value, and highly charged topics, it may not be possible to achieve full consensus on recommendations. Mitigation: Agree on a suitably high voting threshold for non-binding recommendations; recognize issues that are unlikely to be resolved, and avoid forcing a resolution; and emphasize the consensus-oriented goals of the WG from its beginning, encouraging collaborative identification of agreeable solutions rather than creating contentious binding decisions. 10. Resources available to the working group (e.g., datasets, people, IT, etc.) Resources include: Past EarthCube analyses (e.g., EarthCube Semantics Roadmap and End-User Workshop reports); software portals and databases implementing linked data and semantic practices (e.g., BCO-DMO, CZO, R2R); semantic repository software (e.g., BioPortal, MMI ORR) and repositories (e.g., NERC Data Grid, MMI ORR, ESIP Federation’s semantic prototype); semantic community activities (e.g., in ESIP Federation, OGC, RDA, W3C, and Ontolog); and semantic artifacts (e.g., GCMD’s keywords, W3C’s SSN ontology, and artifacts in the repositories and projects listed). 11.Requested total budget and brief budget justification No budget requested. 12. Host (who will be committed to respond to inquiries about the group John Graybeal, MMI/Stanford. Email: [email protected] Skype: graybealski.