Standards-Compliant Schemas and Ontologies for Materials Test Data

The engineering community invests significantly in generating materials test data. Procedural testing standards identify data to be recorded, but in the absence of corresponding formats, the data are rarely conserved, and their value diminishes as the material pedigree, test conditions and results become disassociated. Even when conserved, data invariably remain inaccessible to the wider community, which inevitably acts to hinder both business and research in the engineering sector. Recognizing these issues, CEN (the European Committee for Standardization) is coordinating a 12-month Workshop entitled ELSSI-EMD to develop schemas and ontologies that are derived from materials testing standards and which extend existing specifications (including MatML and ISO 10303-235). With the emergence of a Semantic Web of data, ELSSI-EMD aims to emulate other scientific domains that are developing and leveraging Web technologies to their advantage and that of associated business sectors. This paper elaborates the work to be performed and reports its status.