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 for all terms in the ssn: and sosa: namespaces, either directly or by entailment, except for the following:

Usage of terms in datasets (Consumers)

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.

Analysis of usage in 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D1 Aemet.linkeddata.es (superseded) LOD Laundromat, LOD Cloud Cache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
D27 TERN Ontology TERN Linked Data Services, TERN
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
D32 ABIS Australian Biodiversity Information Standard
D33 3D Cadastre Rob Atkinson, OGC
D34 IDO Maja Milicic Brandt, IDO

presents the coverage of the vocabulary terms of the SSN ontology in the datasets 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.

Core Ontology term usage
Term Datasets Total Comment
Module: SOSA Common
sosa:FeatureOfInterest D1, D5, D11, D12, D14, D15, D17, D20, D21, D27, D34
sosa:Property D3, D5, D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D23, D27, D32, D34 Includes usage of deprecated sub-classes `ObservableProperty` and `ActuatableProperty`
sosa:forProperty
sosa:propertyFor
D14, D18, D20, D34
sosa:hasProperty
sosa:isPropertyOf
D3, D11, D15, D20
sosa:hasFeatureOfInterest
sosa:isFeatureOfInterestOf
D1, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8, D9, D10, D11, D12, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D32, D34
sosa:hasProperty
sosa:isPropertyOf
D11, D14, D15, D18, D20, D34
sosa:hasUltimateFeatureOfInterest
sosa:isUltimateFeatureOfInterestOf
D32
sosa:Procedure D14, D16, D17, D18, D19, D21, D27, D34 Also see entries for sub-classes `sosa:ActuatingProcedure`, `sosa:ObservingProcedure`, `sosa:SamplingProcedure`
sosa:hasInput
sosa:inputFor*
D14, D19, D34
sosa:hasOutput
sosa:outputFor
D14, D19, D34
sosa:hasProcedure
sosa:isProcedureFor
sosa:implementedBy
sosa:implements
D14, D16, D18, D19, D20, D34
sosa:usedForExecution
sosa:usedProcedure
D17, D19, D21, D32, D34
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, D32, D34
sosa:hasSimpleResult D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D32
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, D32
sosa:resultTime D3, D4, D10, D11, D15, D17, D20, D21, D32
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, D32, D34
sosa:Platform D2, D10, D11, D12, D15, D16, D17, D18, D21, D27, D32, D34
sosa:System D2, D10, D11, D15, D16, D34 `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
sosa:deployedOnPlatform
sosa:inDeployment
D2, D11, D16, D20, D34
sosa:deployedSystem
sosa:systemDeployment*
D11, D20, D34
sosa:hasSubSystem
sosa:isSubSystemOf
D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D34
sosa:hosts
sosa:isHostedBy
D10, D12, D21, D11, D15, D17, D18, D32, D34
sosa:hasMember
sosa:isMemberOf
D32
Module: SOSA Actuation
sosa:ActuatingProcedure*
sosa:Actuation D14, D18, D27, D34
sosa:ActuationCollection*
sosa:Actuator D14, D18, D34
sosa:actsOn*
sosa:isActedOnBy
D14, D34
sosa:actsOnProperty
sosa:wasActedOnBy*
D14
sosa:madeActuation
sosa:madeByActuator
D18, D34
Module: SOSA Observation
sosa:Observation D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D21, D27, D28, D32, D34
sosa:ObservationCollection D27, D28, D29, D32
sosa:ObservingProcedure*
sosa:Sensor D2, D11, D14, D15, D17, D18, D20, D22, D27, D32, D34
sosa:Stimulus D15, D34
sosa:detects
sosa:isDetectedBy*
D11, D15, D34
sosa:hasProxy*
sosa:isProxyFor
, D34
sosa:isObservedBy
sosa:observes
D10, D11, D15, D16, D18, D20, D32, D34
sosa:madeBySensor
sosa:madeObservation
D1, D2, D3, D4, D10, D11, D17, D18, D20, D21, D32, D34
sosa:observationRelatedTo*
sosa:relatedObservation*
sosa:observedProperty
sosa:wasObservedBy*
D1, D3, D4, D5, D10, D11, D17, D20, D21, D28, D29, D32, D34
sosa:originated*
sosa:wasOriginatedBy
D15
sosa:qualityOf*
sosa:resultQuality*
Module: SOSA Sampling
sosa:Sample D12, D13, D17, D20, D21, D27, D28, D29, D30, D32
sosa:MaterialSample* D30
sosa:SpatialSample*
sosa:StatisticalSample*
sosa:SampleCollection*
sosa:Sampler D12, D27, D32, D34
sosa:Sampling D12, D27, D32, D34
sosa:SamplingCollection*
sosa:SamplingProcedure*
sosa:featureHasUltimateSample*
sosa:isSampleOfUltimateFOI*
D27, D32
sosa:hasOriginalSample*
sosa:isOriginalSampleOf*
sosa:hasSample
sosa:isSampleOf
D12, D17, D20, D21, D32, D34
sosa:isResultOfMadeBySampler*
sosa:madeSamplingHasResult*
sosa:isResultOfUsedProcedure*
sosa:usedForExecutionHasResult*
sosa:madeBySampler
sosa:madeSampling
D12, D32, D34

Usage in ontologies (Producers)

The goals of this analysis are the following: a) to analyse which modules of the SSN ontology have been used in different ontologies and b) to analyse the coverage of the SSN vocabulary terms and modules in those ontologies.

Analysis of the usage in ontologies

presents the ontologies that reuse the SSN ontology that have been found, along with their URIs.

Ontologies that reuse the SSN ontology
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