SnowTerm Thesaurus

"The project purpose is to develop and maintain a reference structured terminology in the domain of the cryosphere environment. The identification of the potential sources of terminology was carried out with the assistance of experts of the Arabba Avalanche Centre. The result consists of a certain number of lists of terms, usually contained in glossaries where they are supplied with one or more definitions and scarcely organised within a structure. In certain cases they are clustered in thematic areas. The terms of these lists were selected according to their pertinence and relevance.

At present we are working on a database of around 3.700 terms. The thematic areas, covered at present, deal with snow and ice physics, snow and ice morphology, snow and ice radiometry, remote sensing and GIS in cryosphere environment, sea ice, avalanches and glaciers. Concerning the vertical structure we adopted the Classification Scheme already in use for the development of the EARTh Thesaurus. The hierarchical setup is based on facets; according to its intrinsic features, the structure can be used as a semantic reference system, stable and partially independent from the context.

Since the facet structure tends to scatter the terms under the more general referral category, we are implementing a thematic structure that will cluster the terms in themes representing specific sectors. The possibility of applying different thematic schemes allows the exploration of concepts according to different perspectives, which is able to emphasize particular and contingent aspects."