documentation generated from TS

For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:

* AEF: Agricultural industry Electronics Foundation

* FOAF: Friend of a Friend

* GPS: Global Positioning System

* ICAR: Global Standard for Livestock Data

* IT: Information Technology

* NDVI: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index

* OM: Ontology of units of Measure 

* OWL: Web Ontology Language

* OWL-DL: Web Ontology Language - Description Logic

* RDF: Resource Description Framework 

* RDF-S: Resource Description Framework Schema

* SAREF: Smart Applications REFerence ontology

* SAREF4AGRI: SAREF extension for the Smart Agriculture and Food Chain Domain

* SAREF4BLDG: SAREF extension for Buildings

* SAREF4CITY: SAREF extension for Smart Cities

* SOSA: Sensor Observation Sampling Actuator

* SSN: Semantic Sensor Network

* STF: Specialists Task Force

* TR: Technical Report

* TS: Technical Specification

 No newline at end of file

The present document is a major revision of the SAREF4AGRI ontology extension, developed in the context of the STF 641, using updated reference ontology patterns specified in ETSI TS 103 548 [[2]](#[2]) to solve the harmonization needs identified in ETSI TR 103 781 [[i.5]](#[i.5]), with updated development framework and tools defined in ETSI TS 103 673 [[3]](#[3]).The present document was originally developed in the context of the STF 534, an ETSI specialists task force that was established with the goal to extend SAREF [[1]](#[1]) for the domains of Smart Cities, Smart Industry & Manufacturing, and Smart AgriFood ([https://portal.etsi.org/STF/stfs/STFHomePages/STF534](https://portal.etsi.org/STF/stfs/STFHomePages/STF534)). The intention of SAREF4AGRI is to connect SAREF with existing ontologies (such as W3C SSN, W3C SOSA, GeoSPARQL, etc.) and important standardization initiatives in the Smart Agriculture and Food Chain domain, including ICAR for livestock data ([https://www.icar.org/](https://www.icar.org/)), AEF for agricultural equipment ([http://www.aef-online.org](http://www.aef-online.org)), Plant Ontology Consortium for plants ([http://archive.plantontology.org](http://archive.plantontology.org)), AgGateway for IT support for arable farming ([http://www.aggateway.org/](http://www.aggateway.org/)), as mentioned in the associated SAREF4AGRI requirements document ETSI TR 103 511 [[i.2]](#[i.2]).

# SAREF4AGRI ontology and semantics

To show the potential of SAREF4AGRI, the present document focuses on two examples, which are the "livestock farming" and "smart irrigation" use cases. Various other examples exist in the Smart Agriculture and Food Chain domain, such as arable farming, horticulture, agricultural equipment, greenhouses and food chain, as mentioned in [[i.2]](#[i.2]) (for an exhaustive list of use cases, see also the H2020 Large Scale Pilot "Internet of Food and Farm 2020 (IoF2020)" at [https://iof2020.eu/trials](https://iof2020.eu/trials)). However, it was necessary to make actionable choices within the STF 534 timeframe and the available resources, thus livestock farming and smart irrigation have been chosen as the two initial examples to create SAREF4AGRI. As a next step, it is recommended to further refine the proposed livestock farming and smart irrigation examples to add relevant sensors that are not considered yet, and also consider additional use cases to create new releases of SAREF4AGRI, following and extending the examples provided in the present document. As all the SAREF ontologies, SAREF4AGRI is a dynamic semantic model that is meant to evolve over time. Therefore, the stakeholders in the AgriFood domain (starting from the ICAR, AEF and AgGateway initiatives) are invited to use, validate and provide feedback on SAREF4AGRI, collaborating with the SAREF ontology experts to improve and evolve SAREF4AGRI in an iterative and interactive manner, so that changes and additions can be incorporated in future releases of the present document. 

## Introduction and overview

The livestock farming and smart irrigation use cases used as basis to create SAREF4AGRI in the present document are concerned with the integration of multiple data sources for the purpose of providing decision support services located on the local "Farm Management System" of the farmers or provided by a service over the network. Multiple data sources of interest include GPS, meteorological data (both historic and current), remote observation (via satellite sources such as Copernicus) and local observation using near or proximal sensors. As an extension of SAREF, which is a semantic model for IoT that describes smart devices and applications in terms of their functions, services, states and measurements [[1]](#[1]), SAREF4AGRI is concerned with the description of proximal sensors that measure a variety of relevant parameters for agriculture, including: (on animal) movement, temperature, etc., (in the soil) moisture/humidity, Ph value, salinity, compaction, (on plant) plant colour (NDVI), etc. The measurements from these sensors need to be integrated by a decision support service to enable the planning of (for example) a treatment plan for animals (in a livestock scenario), or a decision to irrigate or harvest (in an irrigation, horticulture or greenhouse context). The requirements used to create the SAREF4AGRI extension specified in the present document are described in the associated ETSI TR 103 511 [[i.2]](#[i.2]).

The prefixes and namespaces used in SAREF4AGRI and in the present document are listed in [the Namespace Declarations section](#namespacedeclarations)

 No newline at end of file

The present document is a technical specification of SAREF4AGRI, an OWL-DL ontology that extends SAREF [1] for the agricultural domain. 

The present document is a major revision of the SAREF4AGRI ontology extension, developed in the context of the STF 641, using updated reference ontology patterns specified in ETSI TS 103 548 [2] to solve the harmonization needs identified in ETSI TR 103 781 [i.5], with updated development framework and tools defined in ETSI TS 103 673 [3].The present document was originally developed in the context of the STF 534, an ETSI specialists task force that was established with the goal to extend SAREF [1] for the domains of Smart Cities, Smart Industry & Manufacturing, and Smart AgriFood ([https://portal.etsi.org/STF/stfs/STFHomePages/STF534](https://portal.etsi.org/STF/stfs/STFHomePages/STF534)). The intention of SAREF4AGRI is to connect SAREF with existing ontologies (such as W3C SSN, W3C SOSA, GeoSPARQL, etc.) and important standardization initiatives in the Smart Agriculture and Food Chain domain, including ICAR for livestock data ([https://www.icar.org/](https://www.icar.org/)), AEF for agricultural equipment ([http://www.aef-online.org](http://www.aef-online.org)), Plant Ontology Consortium for plants ([http://archive.plantontology.org](http://archive.plantontology.org)), AgGateway for IT support for arable farming ([http://www.aggateway.org/](http://www.aggateway.org/)), as mentioned in the associated SAREF4AGRI requirements document ETSI TR 103 511 [i.2].

To show the potential of SAREF4AGRI, the present document focuses on two examples, which are the "livestock farming" and "smart irrigation" use cases. Various other examples exist in the Smart Agriculture and Food Chain domain, such as arable farming, horticulture, agricultural equipment, greenhouses and food chain, as mentioned in [i.2] (for an exhaustive list of use cases, see also the H2020 Large Scale Pilot "Internet of Food and Farm 2020 (IoF2020)" at [https://iof2020.eu/trials](https://iof2020.eu/trials)). However, it was necessary to make actionable choices within the STF 534 timeframe and the available resources, thus livestock farming and smart irrigation have been chosen as the two initial examples to create SAREF4AGRI. As a next step, it is recommended to further refine the proposed livestock farming and smart irrigation examples to add relevant sensors that are not considered yet, and also consider additional use cases to create new releases of SAREF4AGRI, following and extending the examples provided in the present document. As all the SAREF ontologies, SAREF4AGRI is a dynamic semantic model that is meant to evolve over time. Therefore, the stakeholders in the AgriFood domain (starting from the ICAR, AEF and AgGateway initiatives) are invited to use, validate and provide feedback on SAREF4AGRI, collaborating with the SAREF ontology experts to improve and evolve SAREF4AGRI in an iterative and interactive manner, so that changes and additions can be incorporated in future releases of the present document.

The livestock farming and smart irrigation use cases used as basis to create SAREF4AGRI in the present document are concerned with the integration of multiple data sources for the purpose of providing decision support services located on the local "Farm Management System" of the farmers or provided by a service over the network. Multiple data sources of interest include GPS, meteorological data (both historic and current), remote observation (via satellite sources such as Copernicus) and local observation using near or proximal sensors. As an extension of SAREF, which is a semantic model for IoT that describes smart devices and applications in terms of their functions, services, states and measurements [1], SAREF4AGRI is concerned with the description of proximal sensors that measure a variety of relevant parameters for agriculture, including: (on animal) movement, temperature, etc., (in the soil) moisture/humidity, Ph value, salinity, compaction, (on plant) plant colour (NDVI), etc. The measurements from these sensors need to be integrated by a decision support service to enable the planning of (for example) a treatment plan for animals (in a livestock scenario), or a decision to irrigate or harvest (in an irrigation, horticulture or greenhouse context). The requirements used to create the SAREF4AGRI extension specified in the present document are described in the associated ETSI TR 103 511 [i.2].

The prefixes and namespaces used in SAREF4AGRI and in the present document are listed in Table 1.

{{table_1}}

Diagrams are to be interpreted using the Chowlk notation [3], Clause 9.7.2.

# Approach

To create the SAREF4AGRI extension specified in the present document, a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches was followed. First, the SAREF4AGRI extension has been developed bottom-up from a set of requirements extracted from the livestock farming and smart irrigation examples (also considering existing ontologies in the sector, such as the Common Dairy Ontology in [i.4]). Note that although various other examples exist in the AgriFood sector (such as arable farming, horticulture, agricultural equipment, greenhouses, food chain, etc.), it was necessary to make actionable choices within the STF 534 timeframe and the available resources, therefore livestock farming and smart irrigation have been chosen as the two initial examples to create SAREF4AGRI. 

As a second step, following a top-down approach, the SAREF4AGRI extension development has been driven by reuse in order to connect SAREF with already existing ontologies (such as SOSA, SSN, FOAF, Schema.org, GeoSPARQL, and WGS84). 

Afterwards, following the process defined in [i.1], the ontological engineers with the support of domain experts considered existing AgriFood standards (e.g. ICAR, ISOBUS, etc.) and vocabularies (e.g. TAXRANK). A list of the considered standards is detailed in [i.2]. Finally, an initial version of the ontological requirements for SAREF4AGRI was proposed, which was then refined together with domain experts in order to obtain a stable version of the requirements and create SAREF4AGRI. 

The following classes and properties have been directly reused from FOAF:

* foaf:Agent

* foaf:Person

* foaf:member

* foaf:Organization

The following classes and properties have been directly reused from GeoSPARQL:

* geo:SpatialObject

* geo:Feature

* geo:Geometry 

* geo:sfContains

The following classes and properties have been directly reused from SOSA:

* sosa:Platform

The following classes and properties have been directly reused from SSN:

* ssn:System

* ssn:deployedOnPlatform 

* ssn:deployedSystem

* ssn:Deployment

Finally, the Time ontology ([http://www.w3.org/2006/time](http://www.w3.org/2006/time)), which is already reused by SAREF, has also been reused in SAREF4AGRI.

As a next step, it is recommended to further refine the livestock farming and smart irrigation examples to add relevant sensors that are not considered yet, and also consider additional use cases to create new releases of SAREF4AGRI, following and extending the examples provided in the present document. As all the SAREF ontologies, SAREF4AGRI is a dynamic semantic model that is meant to evolve over time. Therefore, the stakeholders in the AgriFood domain (starting from the ICAR, AEF and AgGateway initiatives) are invited to use, validate and provide feedback on SAREF4AGRI, collaborating with the SAREF ontology experts to improve and evolve SAREF4AGRI in an iterative and interactive manner, so that changes and additions can be incorporated in future releases of the present document. 

# Bibliography

* ETSI TS 103 267 (V2.1.1) (2020-02): "SmartM2M; Smart Applications; Communication Framework".

* ETSI TS 102 689 (V1.1.1) (2010-08): "Machine-to-Machine communications (M2M); M2M Service Requirements".

<h3>Platform, System and Deployment</h3>

<p>The main entities in the modelling of platforms, systems and deployments are represented by the <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/System">ssn:System</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/Deployment">ssn:Deployment</a> classes. Note that the design patterns for modelling these concepts have been taken from the W3C SSN ontology and, as a best practice for reuse, the SAREF4AGRI model refers directly to the URIs of the SSN (<a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/">http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/</a>) and SOSA (<a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/">http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/</a>) ontologies. </p>

<p>The <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/System">ssn:System</a> class in the SSN ontology represents a system and is components as specific devices, actuators or sensors. Moreover, the <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/Deployment">ssn:Deployment</a> class from the SSN ontology describes the deployment of one or more systems on a <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/Platform">sosa:Platform</a> for a particular purpose for a given time period. SAREF4AGRI defines a <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/core/Device">saref:Device</a> as subclass of an <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/System">ssn:System</a> and extends the <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/Deployment">ssn:Deployment</a> class by means of the <a href="#s4agri:Deployment">s4agri:Deployment</a> class. In this way, it is possible to represent a specific installation of a certain agricultural system (e.g., a smart irrigation system) in a given space (expressed by means of the property <a href="#s4agri:isDeployedAtSpace">s4agri:isDeployedAtSpace</a>) and at a given temporal frame (expressed by means of the property <a href="#s4agri:hasDeploymentPeriod">s4agri:hasDeploymentPeriod</a>) where SAREF4AGRI devices (e.g., a pluviometer, a soil tensiometer, a weather station, and a watering gun) can be deployed. The deployment can involve a given <a href="http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/Platform">sosa:Platform</a> which hosts the system deployed in such deployment. In order to represent temporal information the TIME ontology has been reused. For the geographical information the GeoSPARQL ontology (<a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#">http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#</a>) is reused.</p>

<h3>Animal, Crop and Soil (Feature of Interest)</h3>

<p>The main features of interest in SAREF4AGRI currently support (aspects of) the livestock farming and smart irrigation use cases and are represented by the <a href="#s4agri:Animal">s4agri:Animal</a>, <a href="#s4agri:AnimalGroup">s4agri:AnimalGroup</a>, <a href="#s4agri:Crop">s4agri:Crop</a> and <a href="#s4agri:Soil">s4agri:Soil</a> classes that are shown in <a href="#Figure_1">Figure 1</a>. </p>

<figure>

  <a href="diagrams/FoI.png"><img src="diagrams/FoI.png" alt="Animal, Crop and Soil"/></a>

  <figcaption id="Figure_1">Figure 1: Animal, Crop and Soil</figcaption>

</figure>

<p>The <a href="#s4agri:Animal">s4agri:Animal</a> class describes an animal that can be classified in SAREF4AGRI reusing the TAXRANK taxonomy vocabulary (<a href="http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/taxrank.owl">http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/taxrank.owl#</a>). Besides the reuse of the TAXRANK taxonomy vocabulary, an animal is furthermore defined in SAREF4AGRI as having a birth and death date. An animal also has a unique identifier and can be part of one or more <a href="#s4agri:AnimalGroup">s4agri:AnimalGroup</a> that are used to conduct experiments and observations on the livestock. Note that animals can be also specialized using subclasses, as is shown in the example in clause 4.3.1 with the ex:LactatingCow class that was created as a subclass of <a href="#s4agri:Animal">s4agri:Animal</a>. Animals and animal groups are related to measurements via the <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/core/FeatureOfinterest">saref:FeatureOfinterest</a> concept of SAREF (see clause 4.2.3). </p>

<p>The <a href="#s4agri:Soil">s4agri:Soil</a> class represents the upper layer of the earth in which plants grow. The <a href="#s4agri:Crop">s4agri:Crop</a> class describes a collection of homogeneous plant species that is grown on a large scale commercially (especially a cereal, fruit, or vegetable) and is planted on a single location. A <a href="#s4agri:Crop">s4agri:Crop</a> is grown on some <a href="#s4agri:Parcel">s4agri:Parcel</a>, which is an area of land, defined in SAREF4AGRI as subclass of the <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Feature">geo:Feature</a> (see clause 4.2.6). Moreover, <a href="#s4agri:Crop">s4agri:Crop</a> is related to measurements via <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/core/FeatureOfInterest">saref:FeatureOfInterest</a> (see clause 4.2.3).</p>

<h3>Device</h3>

<p>SAREF4AGRI extends the device hierarchy defined in SAREF in order to include devices needed to support the livestock farming and the smart irrigation use cases. These devices are shown in <a href="#Figure_2">Figure 2</a>. The devices included for the Smart Irrigation use case are: <a href="#s4agri:Pluviometer">s4agri:Pluviometer</a>, <a href="#s4agri:SoilTensiometer">s4agri:SoilTensiometer</a>, <a href="#s4agri:WeatherStation">s4agri:WeatherStation</a>, and <a href="#s4agri:WateringGun">s4agri:WateringGun</a>. The devices included for the Livestock Farming use case are: <a href="#s4agri:MovementActivitySensor">s4agri:MovementActivitySensor</a>, EatingActivitySensor, <a href="#s4agri:MilkingSensor">s4agri:MilkingSensor</a>, and <a href="#s4agri:WeightSensor">s4agri:WeightSensor</a>.</p>

<figure>

  <a href="diagrams/Device.png"><img src="diagrams/Device.png" alt="Device hierarchy"/></a>

  <figcaption id="Figure_2">Figure 2: Device hierarchy</figcaption>

</figure>

<h3>Property</h3>

<p>SAREF4AGRI extends the property hierarchy defined in SAREF in order to include properties needed to support the livestock farming and the smart irrigation use cases. These devices are shown in <a href="#Figure_3">Figure 3</a>. The properties included for the smart irrigation use case are: <a href="#s4agri:SoilMoisture">s4agri:SoilMoisture</a>, <a href="#s4agri:IrrigationWater">s4agri:IrrigationWater</a>, <a href="#s4agri:SoilTemperature">s4agri:SoilTemperature</a>, <a href="#s4agri:AirTemperature">s4agri:AirTemperature</a>, <a href="#s4agri:AmbientHumidity">s4agri:AmbientHumidity</a>, <a href="#s4agri:Precipitation">s4agri:Precipitation</a> and <a href="#s4agri:PlantGrowthStage">s4agri:PlantGrowthStage</a>.</p>

<p>The properties included for the livestock farming use case are: <a href="#s4agri:Yield">s4agri:Yield</a> (which can further be specialized in subclasses, such as MilkYield, CropYield, MeatYield, MilkYield, etc. as needed) and <a href="#s4agri:Intake">s4agri:Intake</a> (which can further be specialized in subclasses, such as FoodIntake for animals, FertilizerIntake for crops, etc. as needed). </p>

<figure>

  <a href="diagrams/Property.png"><img src="diagrams/Property.png" alt="Property hierarchy"/></a>

  <figcaption id="Figure_3">Figure 3: Property hierarchy</figcaption>

</figure>

<h3>Topology</h3>

<p>SAREF4AGRI adopts the same topology modelling pattern that is adopted in the SAREF4CITY extension <a href="#[i.3]">[i.3]</a>, where existing standard ontologies have been reused for this purpose. As shown in <a href="#Figure_4">Figure 4</a>, for representing spatial objects in SAREF4AGRI, the <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Feature">geo:SpatialObject</a> class from GeoSPARQL has been reused along with its subclasses <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Feature">geo:Feature</a>, <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Geometry">geo:Geometry</a> and the properties <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Geometry">geo:sfContains</a>, <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Geometry">geo:sfWithin</a> and <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Geometry">geo:hasGeometry</a>.</p>

<figure>

  <a href="diagrams/Topology.png"><img src="diagrams/Topology.png" alt="Topology model"/></a>

  <figcaption id="Figure_4">Figure 4: Topology model</figcaption>

</figure>

<p>For the purpose of SAREF4AGRI, the <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Feature">geo:Feature</a> class has been extended with the following subclasses: </p>

<ul>

  <li>the <a href="#s4agri:Farm">s4agri:Farm</a></li>

    <li>the <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/saref4bldg/Building">s4bldg:Building</a></li>

      <li>the <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/saref4bldg/BuildingSpace">s4bldg:BuildingSpace</a></li>

        <li>the <a href="#s4agri:Parcel">s4agri:Parcel</a></li>

</ul>

<p>A <a href="#s4agri:Farm">s4agri:Farm</a> can contain one or more <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/saref4bldg/Building">s4bldg:Building</a> and <a href="#s4agri:Parcel">s4agri:Parcel</a> (via the <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#sfContains">geo:sfContains</a> relation). Note that these types of feature are used in the present document as examples, but more feature types (and building types) can be added as needed. Moreover, a <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/saref4bldg/Building">s4bldg:Building</a> can be further decomposed in one or more <a href="https://saref.etsi.org/saref4bldg/BuildingSpace">s4bldg:BuildingSpace</a> individuals (once again via the <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#sfContains">geo:sfContains</a> relation). As subclasses of <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Feature">geo:Feature</a>, all the classes mentioned above inherit the possibility to have a physical geometric description using <a href="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#Geometry">geo:Geometry</a>, if needed (e.g., especially relevant for <a href="#s4agri:Parcel">s4agri:Parcel</a>). </p>

<h3>Person and Organization</h3>

<p>The SAREF4AGRI extension reuses the FOAF vocabulary (<a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/</a>) to represent the concepts of Person and Organization. <a href="#Figure_5">Figure 5</a> shows that in SAREF4AGRI the <a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">foaf:Person</a> and <a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">foaf:Organization</a> classes are extended with the <a href="#s4agri:Farmer">s4agri:Farmer</a> and <a href="#s4agri:FarmHolding">s4agri:FarmHolding</a> subclasses to describe farmers and their organizations. Both <a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">foaf:Person</a> and <a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person">foaf:Organization</a> are subclass of <a href="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Agent">foaf:Agent</a>. Organizations (e.g. <a href="#s4agri:FarmHolding">s4agri:FarmHolding</a>) have members (e.g. farmers). Both <a href="#s4agri:Farmer">s4agri:Farmer</a> and <a href="#s4agri:FarmHolding">s4agri:FarmHolding</a> can manage some <a href="#s4agri:Farm">s4agri:Farm</a>. </p>

<figure>

  <a href="diagrams/Person.png"><img src="diagrams/Person.png" alt="Person and Organization model"/></a>

  <figcaption id="Figure_5">Figure 5: Person and Organization model</figcaption>

</figure>