ESIP members have been developing ontologies for the environmental and geosciences domains for many years. They have also developed ontologies for representing in a machine language its own entities and processes. The purpose of these ontologies is to facilitate the description and exchange of all information related to ESIP. As the federation grows and becomes more diverse, there is a need for hosting these ontologies in a dedicated repository developed specifically for managing, accessing, searching, browsing, and generally disseminating ontologies. The benefit of such a repository for the ESIP foundation is to provide a single site where ontologies related to ESIP, its members, and the earth science domain can be found. Members can thus share their ontologies with each other and build additional constructs on each other’s foundation. <br>
The ESIP semantic portal can be accessed at http://semanticportal.esipfed.org/ontologies