Partnerships

Agri-food Data Canada (ADC) has partnered with the Swiss non-profit Human Colossus Foundation (HCF) to improve the contextual metadata for research data.

In September of 2022 ADC entered into an agreement with HCF to co-develop tools and training to help researchers better describe their datasets. Both ADC and HCF value a decentralized ecosystem model for data and are collaborating on open standards and tools that will be adopted by the semantic engine of ADC.

Agri-food Data Canada will adopt HCF’s data harmonization solution known as overlays capture architecture (OCA) as part of the ADC semantic engine. The semantic engine helps researchers and data scientists write better data schemas for sharing research. Standardized use of the semantic engine will make agri-food data more findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR).

“The semantic engine will be a great tool for researchers starting a research project, allowing them to create a data schema and share it with researchers already collecting the same data in Canada. The semantic engine will enable these researchers to collaborate and write a data standard publicly, making it easier for others to search and find relevant data sets,” said Michelle Edwards, director, agri-food data strategy, at U of G.