Work

Supporting research and pandemic preparedness with an ontology for interoperable pathogen-resource catalogues

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Pandemic preparedness requires pathogen resources and services to be discoverable and comparable across heterogeneous provider catalogues. The European Viral Outbreak Response Alliance Ontology (EVORAO) provides an open semantic model for describing shareable pathogen materials, derived products and associated services. EVORAO uses the Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) as a structural backbone, implements selected constraints aligned with the DCAT Application Profile (DCAT-AP), and defines pathogen-resource concepts, properties and relationships covering identification, biological material origin, availability, request routes, biosafety, transport, licensing, provenance and contacts. Scientific experts curated the terms, definitions and structure used to generate EVORAO and the implementation artefacts that facilitate its adoption. Automated validation includes ontology reasoning, constraint validation and competency-query testing. EVORAO 1.2.0 declares 79 classes and 209 properties; its namespace contains 72 classes, 64 object properties and 129 data properties. EVORAO is released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 Universal. Its implementation in the EVORA Portal illustrates how EVORAO supports unified catalogue search and comparison of pathogen resources and services across providers, thereby supporting pandemic preparedness.

Source: Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23182766

Authors: Lieutaud, Philippe, McLaughlin, James, David, Romain, Parkinson, Helen, Ewbank, Jonathan, Bardsley, Maurice, Haas, Aylin S., Prat, Christine Marie Alexine, Colmant, Agathe M. G., Coutard, Bruno

Institutions: Inserm, Aix-Marseille Université, Association des Operateurs Postaux Publics Europeens, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, European Virus Archive AISBL, Unité des Virus Emergents, European Bioinformatics Institute, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents, Leibniz Institute DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures

Language: English

Topic: Semantic Web and Ontologies

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: European Commission

Award: European Viral Outbreak Response Alliance

OpenAlex ID: W7220747005

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