Presented at Seeds&chips conference, in the session on "The Semantic Web of Food" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs0ktMlmals)

1. An inventory of data standards
for food and agriculture
Valeria Pesce
GFAR Secretariat
Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)
#SemanticWebOfFood @IC3FOODS
@SeedsAndChips @godanSec

2. Global Open Data for Agriculture
and Nutrition initiative (GODAN)
The GODAN initiative was one of the outputs of the G8 International
Conference on Open Data for Agriculture and was announced at the
Open Government Partnership Conference in October 2013.
The initiative focuses on building high-level support among
governments, policymakers, international organizations and business.
Currently around 500 partners worldwide from national governments,
non-governmental, international and private sector organizations.

3. GODAN’s facilitation of work on semantics
Partnership with Research Data Alliance
> Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD)
>> WGs on Wheat Data, Rice Data, “AgriSemantics”
DFID GODAN funding stream >> GODAN Action project
>> Global map of data standards for food and agriculture
>> Gap analysis on availability and adoption of standards
Join!

4. What types of data standards
• All formalizations of ways to describe, model, identify and link data.
• What in W3C terms is defined as “vocabularies”*
* https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/XGR-lld-vocabdataset-20111025/
Metadata element set
Schema
Application profile
Classification scheme
Taxonomy
Terminology
Thesaurus
Subject heading scheme
Model
Ontology
Messaging standard
Name authority list
Code list
Dictionary
Glossary
List
Description / modelling Reference, authority
Element sets / Description vocabularies “Value” vocabularies

5. Purpose of the global map of data standards
• The main purpose of a global map of data standards in a specific field
is to promote the discovery and reuse of vocabularies and their
properties, classes and controlled values. The reuse of existing
vocabularies promotes greater interoperability between
vocabularies and datasets.
paraphrasing what the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative says about their DCMI Registry
(http://dcmi.kc.tsukuba.ac.jp/dcregistry/ )
• Help identify overlaps, duplication, gaps and limits to adoption,
>> encourages not to duplicate efforts and to collaborate to both
develop and use common standards

6. Map of standards so far
VEST / AgroPortal
MAP OF STANDARDS
vest.agrisemantics.org
Number of data standards by domain

7. Food and nutrition surely under-represented
Food product dataFood and
nutrition

9. Challenges:
Not published?
http://www.ic-foods.org/core-activities/ontologies ??

10. Call to action
If
You are the owner / manager of a data standard / vocabulary
relevant for food and agriculture-related data
You know of any data standard / vocabulary relevant for food and
agriculture-related data that is not currently in the map
HELP US improve the map
http://vest.agrisemantics.org
 Add new standards that are not in the map yet
 “Claim” a standard that is there and improve its description
 Give us feedback on the metadata and categorizations we use

11. Thank you
Valeria Pesce
Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)
GFAR Secretariat
#SemanticWebOfFood
@IC3FOODS @SeedsAndChips @godanSec

12. Useful links
• FAO standards: http://www.fao.org/statistics/standards/en/
• INFOODS food standards: http://www.fao.org/infoods/infoods/standards-
guidelines/en/
• GODAN: http://godan.info
• GODAN Action map of standards: http://vest.agrisemantics.org
• AgroPortal: http://agroportal.lirmm.fr
• The assessment process used by the UK Government’s Open Standards Board:
Core questions: https://standards.data.gov.uk/core-assessment-questions
Evaluation questions: https://standards.data.gov.uk/evaluating-proposal-
what-expect
• The ODI Open Data Certificates criteria at https://certificates.theodi.org/en/
(applicable to standards published as open vocabularies)

13. Global map of standards: working together
A global map of existing standards
for the exchange of data in the field of food and agriculture