title: LifeWatch Greece data-services: Discovering Biodiversity Data using Semantic Web Technologies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Biodiversity data is characterized by its cross-disciplinary character, the extremely broad range of data types and structures, and the variety of semantic concepts that it encompasses. Furthermore there is a plethora of different data sources providing resources for the same piece of information in a heterogeneous way. Even if we restrict our attention to Greek biodiversity domain, it is easy to see that biodiversity data remains unconnected and widely distributed among different sources.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  To cope with these issues, in the context of the LifeWatch Greece project, i) we supported cataloguing and publishing of all the relevant metadata information of the Greek biodiversity domain, ii) we integrated data from heterogeneous sources by supporting the definitions of appropriate models, iii) we provided means for efficiently discovering biodiversity data of interest and iv) we enabled the answering of complex queries that could not be answered from the individual sources. This work has been exploited, evaluated and scientificaly confirmed by the biodiversity community through the services provided by the LifeWatch Greece portal.
authors.affiliation: FORTH - Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Nikos
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Minadakis
authors.affiliation: FORTH - Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Yannis
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Marketakis
authors.affiliation: FORTH - Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Doerr
authors.affiliation: FORTH - Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Chryssoula
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bekiari
authors.affiliation: FORTH - Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Papadakos
authors.affiliation: HCMR, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Alexandros
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gougousis
authors.affiliation: HCMR, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bailly
authors.affiliation: HCMR, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Arvanitidis
keywords: Biodiversity Metadata; Data Discovery; Data Integration; Semantic Web