Building a distributed digital library for natural disasters metadata with grid services and RDF

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to describe the main challenges of identifying and accessing useful information and knowledge about natural hazards and disasters results. The paper presents a grid‐based digital library system designed to address the challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

The need to organize and publish metadata about European research results in the field of natural disasters has been met with the help of two innovative technologies: the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). OGSA provides a common platform for sharing distributed metadata securely. RDF facilitates the creation and exchange of metadata.

Findings

Using grid technology allows the RDF metadata of European research results in the field of natural disasters to be shared securely and effectively in a heterogeneous network environment.

Originality/value

A metadata approach is proposed for the extraction of the metadata, and their distribution to third parties in batch, and their sharing with other applications can be a quickly process. Furthermore, a method is set out to describe metadata in a common and open format, which can become a widely accepted standard; the existence of a common standard enables the metadata storage in different platforms while supporting the capability of distributed queries across different metadata databases, the integration of metadata extracted from different sources, etc. It can be used for the general‐purpose search engines.

Citation

Xing, W., Dikaiakos, M.D., Yang, H., Sphyris, A. and Eftichidis, G. (2005), "Building a distributed digital library for natural disasters metadata with grid services and RDF", Library Management, Vol. 26 No. 4/5, pp. 230-245. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435120510596080