Towards contextual awareness and interoperability in an enhanced VRE: mapping individual metadata schemata to CERIF

Abstract

Presentation of the VRE4EIC European project (H2020-676247) for creating a Europe-wide interoperable Virtual Research Environment, http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/198324_en.html.

Interoperability in the eVRE (enhanced Virtual Research Environment) architecture relies on catalogs accessed by a Metadata Manager component. These catalogs are populated with metadata in the CERIF format to describe entities such as datasets, software services, equipment, facilities, persons, organisations, access rights, etc. When querying the VRE system, the query expressed in CERIF format has to be transformed into the metadata formats of the underlying eRI (e-Research Infrastructures), i.e. to have contextual awareness. The results, expressed in the local metadata formats, must then be transformed into CERIF to be aggregated and presented to the user.

Thus, mappings between CERIF and the diverse metadata formats used by the eRI are needed. They are expressed, in the X3ML mapping definition language, using the 3M tool provided by FORTH that integrates an (X3ML) transformation engine to massively transform metadata records, once the mapping has been described. Standards being mapped with CERIF include DCAT, CKAN, Dublin Core, INSPIRE / GeoDACAT-AP.