Ontology evaluation is a maturing discipline with methodologies and measures being developed and proposed. However, evaluation methods that have been proposed have not been applied to specific examples. In this paper, we present the state-of-the-art in ontology evaluation -current methodologies, criteria and measures, analyse appropriate evaluations that are important to our application -browsing in Wikipedia, and apply these evaluations in the context of ontologies with varied properties. Specifically, we seek to evaluate ontologies based on categories found in Wikipedia.

eReefs is a comprehensive interoperable information platform that has been developed for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region to provide users with access to improved environmental intelligence allowing them to assess past, present, and future conditions, as well as management options to mitigate the risks associated with multiple and sometimes competing uses of the GBR. eReefs is built upon an integrated system of data, catchment and marine models, visualisation, reporting and decision support tools that span the entire GBR area. This communication briefly describes eReefs architecture and components and provides examples of applications that have been used to inform policy and management decisions, and finally discusses challenges and key learnings and considers future developments and applications.

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The environmental sciences are witnessing a data revolution as large amounts of data are being made available at an increasing rate. Many datasets are being published through operational monitoring programs, research activities and global earth observation virtual laboratories. An important aspect is the ability to query relevant metadata which can potentially provide useful information to discover, access and interpret environmental datasets, information about the data providers themselves, data services, data encodings, observation and measurement properties and data service endpoints. However, support for producing and accessing metadata descriptions in a flexible, extensible, easily integrated and easily discovered manner is lacking as current methods require interpreting multiple standards and formalisms. In this paper, we propose components to streamline discovery and access of hydrological and environmental data: a Data Provider Node ontology (DPN-O) which allows precise descriptions to be captured about datasets, data services and their interfaces; and a Data Brokering Layer which provides an Application Programming Interface (API) for registering metadata for discovery and query of registered DPN datasets. We discuss this work in the context of the eReefs project which is developing an integrated information platform for discovery and visualization of observational and modelled data of the Great Barrier Reef.