Paola Podesta
Research Fellow
National Research Council
Institute of Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies
Italy

Biography
She got her PhD degree in Computer Science at University of Genova (Italy). From February 2011 to January 2013 she held a post-doc position in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences of the University of Genoa. From February 2013 till now she is holding a research fellow position at CNR-IMATI Genoa. Her research interests are focused on geospatial databases, considering in particular geo-spatial data model, topological similarity, geospatial query processing, and approximate query processing for both stored data and data streams. Now, she is also investigating the research areas of Knowledge Management System and Linked Data.

Abstract
LusTRE, the Linked Thesaurus fRamework for the Environment

Co-Authors:
Andreas Abecker, Dr., Disy Informationssysteme GmbH
Riccardo Albertoni, Dr., Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche (CNR)
Carsten Heidmann, Dr., Disy Informationssysteme GmbH
Monica De Martino, Dr., Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche (CNR)
Roman Woessner, Dr., Disy Informationssysteme GmbH

LusTRE is a Thesaurus Framework for the Environment developed as part of the eENVplus project about infrastructures for the INSPIRE implementation. It is being developed to support better metadata compilation and metadata discovery for describing and finding INSPIRE data and services. The framework aims to provide shared standard and scientific terms for a common understanding of environmental data among the communities operating in the different fields. It addresses the needs of different user communities in sharing digital information at cross-border level, i.e. concept inter-operability and concept-availability in multiple languages as it is needed in metadata compilation and information discovery. LusTRE is characterised by two components: 1) a Knowledge infrastructure (the LusTRE Vocabularies, LusTRE-VOC). It allows to interlink different environmental domain vocabularies and offers access to them as one virtual integrated linked data source. it already includes differrent SKOS/RDF resources such as the Thist thesaurus for geology, the EUNIS Species and Habitat types, the Digital map on EU Ecological Regions, AQ EEA code lists and the Environmental Application Reference Thesaurus (EARTh) which is adopted as backbone thesaurus in the framework. Also the popular vacabularies GEMET and AGROVOC are in the SPARQL endpoint of LusTRE. Besides, it includes intra-thesaurus interlinks as well as an inter-thesaurus (LOD datasets as EUROVOC, DBPEDIA). 2) a Web Service infrastructure (the LusTRE Exploitation Services, LusTRE-ES). It allows to make optimum use of the knowledge contained in LusTRE for improving existing metadata tools and geoportals. The list of service modules and their respective capabilities currently being developed for the eENVplus project are available at http://linkeddata.ge.imati.cnr.it. Some example are KeywordCompletion, KeywordExplanation, KeywordTranslation, ThesaurusResolution, QueryReformulation. SemanticExplorative Search. Different tools such as metadata editors, metadata validators, CSWs, information portals or specific application solutions, can use LusTRE. Currently, the integration with different clients is being tested with EUOSME INPIRE metadata tool, JRC geoportal developer version and the commercial metadata management tool Disy Preludio.