Ocean Information Model - OIM
Creators: name: Palma, Raul
Publisher: name: GEO Knowledge Hub
Year: 2025
Subjects: data model
ontology

description: The Ocean Information Model (OIM) is a common vocabulary aimed at providing the basis of a common ocean data space and enabling the interoperability of different systems, potentially from different vendors. Based on the OIM, i) data producers/integrators will be able to adapt and apply existing tools to pre-process, integrate and harmonize data from different sources (see next section); ii) service providers will be able to develop lightweight service wrappers and translators, also known as data providers and consumers, which will enable the different tools/platforms to expose and consume data in an interoperable form.
 
Based on the analysis of the state of the art and the initial analysis of the Iliad modeling requirements, OIM is implemented by reusing and building partially over the Agriculture Information Model (AIM), currently under OGC standardization process, which in turn reuses and aligns various relevant cross-domain standard ontologies and vocabularies, particularly from OGC and W3C. A similar approach has been taken in the AD4GD project to create the Green Deal Information Model (GDIM).
 
How will OIM benefit end-users and technology providers?
For end-users, OIM will enable them to use the best suited solution for their needs, including systems and components from different technology providers that will be able to seamlessly interoperate and exchange data. The transparent use of these different components allows end-users to use the best and most cost-effective combination to carry out their activities efficiently and economically, avoiding vendor lock-in. Moreover, having data produced and collected by different systems in an OIM-compliant format will support end-users in their decision making processes, as the underlying tools and analytic services will be able to have an integrated data access to exploit the full value of available data.
 
For technology providers, on the other hand, producing and consuming data in an OIM-compliant format will allow their systems and components to interoperate with other existing solutions. This will allow them to focus their efforts on developing specialised components reflecting their main expertise, and/or reduce costs, time and efforts needed to develop components that are already available. Also, the possibility to interoperate with components from different providers will allow some providers, especially smaller (e.g., SMEs, start-ups), to enter in otherwise monopolised ocean solutions. Additionally, technology providers will be able to ensure the future interoperation with other components, as long as they will be able also to produce/consume OIM-compliant data.
 
OIM design and implementation
Analogously to AIM, OIM is designed and implemented following a modular approach in a layered architecture with the following layers.
OIM is realized as a suite of OWL ontologies (serialized as Turtle), establishing alignments between the reused standards and well-scoped dominant models to enable their interoperability and the integration of existing data. From these ontologies we generated the corresponding JSON-LD contexts, JSON schemas (for metadata), and in the future SHACL shapes, to facilitate the adoption by service developers/providers, and the validation of data compliance.
 
All the OIM modules and related resources are publicly available in the Iliad GitHub repository: https://github.com/ILIAD-ocean-twin/OIM. All the ontologies generated, as well as the corresponding JSON-LD contexts, use persistent identifiers that are resolvable. The base namespace for OIM is: https://w3id.org/iliad/oim (which resolves to the OIM profile module, which the main entry point to the IM).
 
References
 
* Palma R., Janiak B., Zaborowski P., et al. Iliad approach for semantic Interoperability in Digital Twins of the Ocean. Proceedings of Oceans 2025 To Be Published
* Iliad deliverable D4.3