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This document provides an analysis of the usage of the SSN Ontology. This edition adds usage information for terms added to SSN in the 2023 update [[vocab-ssn-2023]].

This W3C note on the usage of the SSN ontology (http://w3c.github.io/sdw-sosa-ssn/ssn/) was prepared to support its acceptance as an updated W3C recommendation.

Introduction

The goal of the work is to analyse the usage of the SSN ontology along two aspects:

  1. usage of SSN terms in Linked Data datasets (Consumers)
  2. usage in ontologies that include or extend SSN (Producers)

This report is a supplement to the original usage report, adding usage information relating to the terms added to SSN in the 2023 update.

Summary of 2017 usage report

The usage report for the previous edition of the SSN Ontology [[usage-ssn]] documented evidence of implementation in at least two datasets or ontologies for all terms in the ssn: and sosa: namespaces, either directly or by entailment, except for the following:

Usage of terms in datasets (Consumers) and ontologies (Producers)

The earlier edition of the usage report included automatic analysis of datasets included in several linked data registries. Most of the terms added in the 2023 edition were prompted by specific requirements from the community, or from logical consequences of including the new terms. Several projects provide implementations that use the new terms in datasets.

Datasets

presents the datasets that used the SSN ontology that provided evidence of use of terms defined in the previous Edition.

Datasets for 2017 edition
Identifier Dataset Source
D1 Aemet.linkeddata.es (superseded) LOD Laundromat, LOD Cloud Cache
D2 environment.data.gov.au (retired) Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Government Linked Data Working group
D3 CRTM (retired) Freddy Priyatna
D4 ESPACIO DE DATOS DE ZARAGOZA Oscar Corcho
D5 SmartCity dataset and service Raúl García-Castro
D6 Surrey IOT Traffic dataset Amélie Gyrard
D7 Surrey IOT Air Pollution dataset Amélie Gyrard
D8 Surrey IOT Aarhus Parking inventory Amélie Gyrard
D9 Surrey IOT Aarhus Cultural Events graph Amélie Gyrard
D10 INRAE Weather Ontology (retired) Amélie Gyrard
D11 Graph of Things (retired) Danh Le Phuoc
D12 Geoscience Australia Sample Catalog (retired) | Geoscience Australia Survey Catalog (retired) Nicholas Car, Geoscience Australia
D13 Geologic Timescale Ontology Simon Cox, IUGS Commission for Geoscience Information
D14 Syndream (retired) Nicolas Seydoux, IRIT/LAAS-CNRS
D15 FixO3 Observatories
Browse | Documents 		Markus Stocker, MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
D16 NERC Linked Systems Alexandra Kokkinaki, British Oceanographic Data Centre
D17 IDEAS Coal Oil Point Reserve Observations (retired) Krzysztof Janowicz, IDEAS Coal Oil Point Reserve Observations
D18 Tessel 2's LEDs implementation (retired) for Tessel 2 Tobias Käfer, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
D19 PEP Platform (retired) Maxime Lefrançois, ITEA2 12004 Smart Energy Aware Systems Project
D20 bioTope (retired) Alessandro Cerioni, IoT European Platforms Initiative bIoTope Project
D21 enviroCar ontology Krzysztof Janowicz, enviroCar
D22 XDOMES (retired) sensorType Janet Fredericks, XDOMES (retired)
D23 XDOMES (retired) observableProperty Janet Fredericks, XDOMES (retired)

presents new datasets (since 2017) that use the SSN ontology, or terms from [[[vocab-ssn-ext]]] which have been incorporated into the 2023 edition.

New datasets for 2023 edition
Identifier Dataset Source
D24 SAREF Maxime Lefrançois, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne
D25 KnowWhereGraph Krzysztof Janowicz, University of Vienna
D26 OneWater - Eau Bien Commun Sylvain Grellet, BRGM
D28 Biodiversity Data Repository Nicholas Car, Australian DCCEEW
D29 geochemxl Nicholas Car, Geological Survey of Queensland
D30 GSWA Supermodel Nicholas Car, Geological Survey of Western Australia
D31 Connected Systems Alex Robin, Georobotix
D33 3D Cadastre Rob Atkinson, OGC

Ontologies

presents the ontologies reusing the SSN ontology that were catalogued in the previous edition.

Ontologies that reuse the SSN ontology 2017 edition
Identifier Ontology
AEMET http://aemet.linkeddata.es/ontology/
aws http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/meteo/aws
BCI https://w3id.org/BCI-ontology
CF http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/cf/cf-feature
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/cf/cf-property
DogOnt http://elite.polito.it/ontologies/dogont.owl
Energy http://smartcity.linkeddata.es/lcc/ontology/EnergyConsumption
iot-lite http://purl.oclc.org/NET/UNIS/fiware/iot-lite#
IoT-O http://www.irit.fr/recherches/MELODI/ontologies/IoT-O
M3 Lite http://purl.org/iot/vocab/m3-lite#
OpenIoT http://sensormeasurement.appspot.com/ont/sensor/openIoT.owl
PEP-SSNAlignment https://w3id.org/pep/SSNAlignment
RAMI http://vocab.cs.uni-bonn.de/eis/rami/
SAN http://www.irit.fr/recherches/MELODI/ontologies/SAN
SAO http://iot.ee.surrey.ac.uk:8080/resources/ontologies/sao.ttl
SPITFIRE http://sensormeasurement.appspot.com/ont/sensor/spitfire.owl
VITAL http://vital-iot.eu/ontology/ns/ontology.owl
Geologic timescale http://resource.geosciml.org/ontology/timescale/gts/w3c
IoT-O (SOSA) https://www.irit.fr/recherches/MELODI/ontologies/iot-o-sosa.html
SAN (SOSA) https://www.irit.fr/recherches/MELODI/ontologies/san-sosa.html
FixO3 ontology http://seprojects.marum.de/envriplus/fixo3ld/docs/
SEAS-SSN Alignment https://w3id.org/seas/SSNAlignment
LSO http://linkedsystems.uk/ns/lso/
Trajectory Ontology SOSA Alignment http://descartes-core.org/ontologies/trajectory/1.0/trajectory_sosa_alignment.ttl

presents new ontologies (since 2017) that use the SSN ontology.

New ontologies for 2023 edition
Identifier Ontology Source
SAREF https://saref.etsi.org/core/
KnowWhereGraph https://knowwheregraph.org/
OneWater - Eau Bien Commun https://www.onewater.fr/en
TERN https://ternaustralia.github.io/ontology_tern/
ABIS https://ausbigg.github.io/abis/specification.html
geochemxl https://github.com/geological-survey-of-queensland/geochemxl
Geosamples https://linked.data.gov.au/def/geosamples
Resource Occurrence https://geological-survey-of-western-australia.github.io/GSWA-Supermodel/components/resource-occurrence/
3D Cadastre 3D Cadastre
IDO-SSN Alignment https://rds.posccaesar.org/ontology/lis14/ont/ido-ssn/0.1/

Term usage

presents the coverage of the vocabulary terms of the SSN ontology in the datasets and ontologies from both 2017 and now.

Object-properties are listed with their inverses. We consider usage of any object-property to also provide evidence of usage of its inverse.

Terms added in the 2023 Edition are indicated with an asterisk*.

Core Ontology term usage
Term Datasets Ontologies Total Comment
Module: SOSA Common
sosa:FeatureOfInterest D1, D5, D11, D12, D14, D15, D17, D20, D21 AEMET, BCI, CF, Energy, IoT-O, SAN, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, Trajectory,TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:Property D3, D5, D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D23 AEMET, BCI, Energy, IoT-O, RAMI, SAN, SPITFIRE, VITAL, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, LSO, ABIS, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment Includes usage of deprecated sub-classes `ObservableProperty` and `ActuatableProperty`
sosa:forProperty
sosa:propertyFor* 		D14, D18, D20 BCI, IoT-O, SAN, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, LSO, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasProperty
sosa:isPropertyOf 		D3, D11, D15, D20 BCI, CF, SAN, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasFeatureOfInterest
sosa:isFeatureOfInterestOf 		D1, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8, D9, D10, D11, D12, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21 AEMET, BCI, Energy, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment, Resource Occurrence
sosa:hasProperty
sosa:isPropertyOf 		D11, D14, D15, D18, D20 IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasUltimateFeatureOfInterest*
sosa:isUltimateFeatureOfInterestOf* 		D32
sosa:Procedure D14, D16, D17, D18, D19, D21 IoT-O, OpenIoT, PEP-SSN ALignment, SAN, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment Also see entries for sub-classes `sosa:ActuatingProcedure`, `sosa:ObservingProcedure`, `sosa:SamplingProcedure`
sosa:hasInput
sosa:inputFor* 		D14, D19 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasOutput
sosa:outputFor* 		D14, D19 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasProcedure*
sosa:isProcedureFor*
sosa:implementedBy
sosa:implements 		D14, D16, D18, D19, D20 IoT-O, PEP-SSN Alignment, SAN, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:usedForExecution*
sosa:usedProcedure 		D17, D19, D21 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, SEAS-SSN-Alignment, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment, Geosamples
sosa:Execution* - - - `Execution` is considered to be abstract so is not used directly. Individual Executions are typed with one of the (concrete) sub-classes: `Actuation`, `Observation` or `Sampling`.
sosa:ExecutionCollection* - - - `ExecutionCollection` is considered to be abstract so is not used directly. Individual ExecutionCollections are typed with one of the (concrete) sub-classes: `ActuationCollection`, `ObservationCollection` or `SamplingCollection`.
sosa:endTime*
sosa:hasInputValue*
sosa:inputValueForExecution*
sosa:hasResult
sosa:isResultOf 		D3, D4, D5, D10, D11, D12, D15, D19 BCI, Energy, IoT-O, RAMI, SAN, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, LSO, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment, Geosamples, Resource Occurrence
sosa:hasSimpleResult D15, D17, D18, D20, D21 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, ABIS
sosa:madeBySystem*
sosa:madeExecution* 		- - - `madeBySystem` and `madeExecution` are considered to be abstract so are not used directly. Applications use a concrete sub-property: `madeByActuator`, `madeBySensor` or `madeBySampler` and `madeActuation` `madeObservation` `madeSampling`
sosa:phenomenonOccurred*
sosa:phenomenonTime 		D5, D11 Energy, FixO3, ABIS
sosa:resultTime D3, D4, D10, D11, D15, D17, D20, D21 OpenIoT, FixO3, ABIS
sosa:startTime*
sosa:Asset* - - - `Asset` is considered to be abstract so is not used directly. Individual Assets are typed with one of the (concrete) sub-classes: `System` or `Platform`.
sosa:Deployment D2, D16 FixO3, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:Platform D2, D10, D11, D12, D15, D16, D17, D18, D21 iot-lite, FixO3, ABIS, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:System D2, D10, D11, D15, D16 iot-lite, IoT-O, VITAL, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment `System` is considered to be abstract so is not normally used directly. Individual Systems are typed with one of the (concrete) sub-classes: `Actuator`, `Sensor`, or `Sampler`.
sosa:deployedAsset*
sosa:hasDeployment 		D16 FixO3
sosa:deployedOnPlatform
sosa:inDeployment 		D2, D11, D16, D20 FixO3, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:deployedSystem
sosa:systemDeployment* 		D11, D20 FixO3, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasSubSystem
sosa:isSubSystemOf* 		D15, D17, D18, D20, D21 iot-lite, VITAL, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hosts
sosa:isHostedBy 		D10, D12, D21, D11, D15, D17, D18 iot-lite, OpenIoT, FixO3, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasMember*
sosa:isMemberOf* 		D32
Module: SOSA Actuation
sosa:ActuatingProcedure*
sosa:Actuation D14, D18 BCI, PEP-SSN ALignment, IoT, SAN, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:ActuationCollection*
sosa:Actuator D14, D18 BCI, PEP-SSN ALignment, IoT, SAN, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:actsOn*
sosa:isActedOnBy 		D14 SAN, FixO3, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:actsOnProperty
sosa:wasActedOnBy* 		D14 FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment
sosa:madeActuation
sosa:madeByActuator 		D18 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, IDO-SSN Alignment
Module: SOSA Observation
sosa:Observation D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D28 BCI, PEP-SSN Alignment, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, Trajectory, ABIS, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment, Resource Occurrence
sosa:ObservationCollection* D27, D28, D29 ABIS
sosa:ObservingProcedure*
sosa:Sensor D2, D11, D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D22 BCI, DogOnt, iot-lite, IoT-O, OpenIoT, PEP-SSN Alignment, RAMI, VITAL, IoT, FixO3, SEAS-SSN ALignment, LSO, Trajectory, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:Stimulus D15 BCI, FixO3, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:detects
sosa:isDetectedBy* 		D11, D15 FixO3, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:hasProxy*
sosa:isProxyFor 		BCI, FixO3, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:isObservedBy
sosa:observes 		D10, D11, D15, D16, D18, D20 aws, BCI, RAMI, SPITFIRE, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:madeBySensor
sosa:madeObservation 		D1, D2, D3, D4, D10, D11, D17, D18, D20, D21 BCI, PEP-SSN Alignment, SAO, FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, Trajectory, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:observationRelatedTo*
sosa:relatedObservation*
sosa:observedProperty
sosa:wasObservedBy* 		D1, D3, D4, D5, D10, D11, D17, D20, D21, D28, D29 ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment, Resource Occurrence
sosa:originated*
sosa:wasOriginatedBy 		D15 FixO3
sosa:qualityOf*
sosa:resultQuality*
Module: SOSA Sampling
sosa:Sample D12, D13, D17, D20, D21, D28, D29, D30 Geologic Timescale, FixO3, ABIS, TERN, Geosamples
sosa:MaterialSample* D30 Implements ISO 19156:2011 SF_Specimen, ISO 19156:2023 MaterialSample
sosa:SpatialSample* Implements ISO 19156:2011 SF_SpatialSamplingFeature, ISO 19156:2023 SpatialSample
sosa:StatisticalSample* Implements ISO 19156:2023 StatisticalSample
sosa:SampleCollection*
sosa:Sampler D12 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, ABIS, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment
sosa:Sampling D12 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, ABIS, TERN, IDO-SSN Alignment, Geosamples
sosa:SamplingCollection*
sosa:SamplingProcedure*
sosa:featureHasUltimateSample*
sosa:isSampleOfUltimateFOI* 		D27 ABIS
sosa:hasOriginalSample*
sosa:isOriginalSampleOf*
sosa:hasSample
sosa:isSampleOf 		D12, D17, D20, D21 FixO3, SEAS-SSN Alignment, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment, Geosamples
sosa:isResultOfMadeBySampler*
sosa:madeSamplingHasResult*
sosa:isResultOfUsedProcedure*
sosa:usedForExecutionHasResult*
sosa:madeBySampler
sosa:madeSampling 		D12 PEP-SSN Alignment, FixO3, ABIS, IDO-SSN Alignment