The GACS project aims to create a common repository of terminological and conceptual information in agriculture to enhance data interoperability and efficiency. It has developed a prototype mapping 10,000 core concepts from various vocabularies, resulting in approximately 15,000 concepts and 400,000 terms. The project emphasizes the importance of linked vocabularies and data for better dataset descriptions and understanding within the agricultural domain.

1. The GACS Project
Semantics for Open Data
Caterina Caracciolo
FAO

2. GACS??
= Global Agriculture Concept Scheme
• To make a common repository of
terminological and conceptual information in
agriculture
• To achieve efficiency of scale by maintaining
core concepts in cooperation

3. How global?

4. Why should all this be interesting? #1
Vocabularies are used in concrete applications
to describe datasets, pieces of data

5. Why should all this be interesting? #2
Both vocabularies and data can be linked ->
more data getting closer to grasp
– E.g. AGROVOC linked to 16, EUROVOC, GEMET,
GeoNames, Wikipedia, LCSH, ...

6. Estimated overlap between
AGROVOC, NALT, CABT

7. Where are we now?
• First prototype, Alpha 1, internal
• Formed by mapping a core of 10,000 concepts
from each vocabulary
– Info from matched concepts is aggregated – only Only
exact match considered
• Result: ~ 15,000 concepts, ~ 400,000 terms

8. GACS Demo Alpha

9. Highlights
• Temporary URIs now
• All RDF-SKOS
• SKOSMOS for visualization
• VocBench for data maintenance

10. Something to consider...

11. Different in concept granularity
AGROVOC: [animal oil], [animal fats]
NALT: [animal fats and oils]

12. Modelling
• Common names and scientific names are
different things? Or different names for the
same things?
• E.g. Salmo salar, salmo carpio, salmo ferox -
salmon

13. References
• Reports from GACS:
http://aims.fao.org/community/agrovoc/blogs
/phase-one-gacs-approved-read-reports
• To follow progress, check out
http://aims.fao.org and subscribe to the
user communit