Excerpt from the Introduction to GEMET ver. 2.0, Aug. 1999, as released by the Authors:

  CNR -  Italian National Research Council - Environmental Knowledge organisation Laboratory (formerly Environmental Research and Documentation Unit) - Rome, Italy

   UBA - German Federal Environmental Agency - Documentation and Environmental Library - Berlin, Germany

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GEMET, the GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus

for the

Catalogue of Data Sources of the European Environment Agency

1. Introduction

 GEMET, the GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus, has been developed as an indexing, retrieval and control tool for the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) of the European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen.

The basic idea for the development of GEMET was to use the best of the presently available excellent multilingual thesauri, in order to save time, energy and funds.

GEMET was conceived as a "general" thesaurus, aimed to define a common general language, a core of general terminology for the environment.

Specific thesauri and descriptor systems (e.g. on Nature Conservation, on Wastes, on Energy, etc.) have been excluded from the first step of development of the thesaurus and have been taken into account only for their structure and upper level terminology.

GEMET has been compiled by merging the terms of the following multilingual documents:

1. A selection of the "Umwelt Thesaurus" of Umweltbundesamt (UBA), Berlin, 1995, with more than 2.000 descriptors out of 8.500 in German and English.
2. The complete "Thesaurus Italiano per l'Ambiente (TIA)" quadrilingual version on CD-ROM of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Rome, 1994, with more than 4.000 descriptors in Italian, English, Dutch and German and a selection of more than 2.000 descriptors of this thesaurus, compiled as a Classification Scheme for the MET of the EEA, 1995 (see the following No. 3).
3. The complete "Multilingual Environment Thesaurus (MET)" of Nederlands Bureau voor Onderzoek Informatie (NBOI), Amsterdam, developed on the Dutch "Milieu-thesaurus" for the EEA in 1995, with more than 2.300 descriptors in Dutch, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish.
4. The complete "EnVoc Thesaurus", of UNEP Infoterra, 1997 edition, with about 2.000 descriptors in English, French and Spanish, with possibility of access to Arabic, Chinese and Russian.
5. The complete "Thesaurus de Medio Ambiente" on CD-ROM of Ministerio de Obras Publicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente (MOPTMA), Madrid, 1995, with more than 2.600 descriptors in Spanish, English, French, German.
6. The complete "Lexique environnement - Planète", of the Ministère de l'environnement, Paris, 1995, with more than 5.000 descriptors in French and English.
7. 7.      Descriptors of relevant documents of the EEA, namely "Europe's Environment, The Dobris Assessment", the "DPSIR Data Flow Scheme", as well as terminology of ETCs and EIONET, in English.
8. Descriptors of the "Thesaurus Eurovoc" of the European Parliament, Brussels, 1996, in French, English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish, with possibility of access to Danish, Greek, and Portuguese.

The merging has been performed both on conceptual and formal basis. Coinciding concepts in the different thesauri have been identified and scored. Like in other multilingual thesauri, e. g. Infoterra EnVoc, a neutral alphanumerical notation allows the identification of a concept independently on the user's language.

The links with the original thesauri are ensured by the respective identifiers or code notations.

Following the identification of the coinciding concepts, a selection was made by the experts of the National Focal Points of the organisations involved.

The resulting 6.562 terms have been arranged in a classification scheme made of 3 super-groups, 30 groups plus 5 accessory, instrumental groups. Each descriptor has been arranged in a hierarchical structure headed by a Top Term. The level of poly-hierarchy, i.e. the allocation of a descriptor to more than one group, has been kept to a minimum. Further, to allow a thematic retrieval of terms thematically related but scattered in different groups, a set of 40 themes have been agreed upon with the EEA and each descriptor has been assigned to as many themes as necessary. Thus, the user can access the thesaurus through the group-hierarchical list, through the thematic list or through the alphabetical list. As a complement to the hierarchical "vertical" relations, an exhaustive series of strong "horizontal" relations between terms (RT, Related Terms) have been introduced. A progressive Line Number has been assigned to each descriptor of the systematic list, in order to help the user of the lists to identify the descriptor in the different lists. The Line Number is merely a neutral identifier for the present version.

The GEMET size, formerly figured at about 2.000 descriptors, rose to more than 5.000 in the course of merging, due to the limited overlapping between the different thesauri, to constraints of the selection work carried out by the parental organisations and to a few new additions, mainly from CDS indexing work.

The present Version 2.0 of GEMET is the result of a close collaboration between CNR and UBA. It presents 5.298 descriptors, including 109 Top Terms, and 1.264 synonyms in English. The 5.524 terms belonging to the parental thesauri and not included in GEMET, constitute an accessory alphabetical list of free terms.

British English has been proposed as language of choice for the EEA, but the American English equivalents have been added through a collaboration with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The present Version 2.0 of GEMET provides a complete numerical equivalence (all the descriptors have an equivalent) with the following languages: Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish; Danish and Greek are at present under work, while Swedish is not yet foreseen. The semantic equivalence (correct correspondence of meaning between languages) has been separately ensured by the NFPs experts for Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and almost completely for Spanish. Equivalence in Finnish is not yet validated.

The translation of GEMET into other languages, both extra-EU and extra-European is foreseen in the future.

The need to ensure the internal systematic and linguistic coherence of the thesaurus led the GEMET Working Group to foster the endowment of all the descriptors with a consistent set of definitions. There are at present more than 4.000 definitions available, which provide a useful glossary function where the semantic of the thesaurus structure might not be completely caught. The sources of definitions are presented after the References.

GEMET follows the ISO norms on monolingual and multilingual thesauri.

The thesaurus is part of the EEA-CDS, where it is used for indexing.

The printed edition, is structured as follows: 

• Volume 1:         Systematic List of Descriptors, in English, containing the allocation of descriptors to groups and the poly-hierarchical relations of the descriptors;
• Volume 2:         Thematic List of Descriptors, in English, containing the allocation of descriptors to themes;
• Volume 3:         Alphabetical List of Terms, in English, containing descriptors, definitions, scope notes, synonyms, allocation to groups and themes, top terms, broader terms, narrower terms, related terms;
• Volume 4:         Concordance, i.e. the Alphabetical List of Descriptors and Non-Descriptors in permuted form;
• Volume 5:         Multilingual List of Descriptors, with British English as the filing language.

4. List of Groups

  No. *     Abbreviation   Name of the Super-group/Group____________________________________

Supergroup      1             NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, ANTHROPIC ENVIRONMENT

1          ENV                 ENVIRONMENT (natural environment, anthropic environment)

2          TIM                  TIME

3          SPA                  SPACE

4          ATM                ATMOSPHERE (air, climate)

5          HYD                 HYDROSPHERE (freshwater, marine water, waters)

6          LIT                   LITHOSPHERE (soil, geological processes)

7          LAN                 LAND (landscape, geography)

8          BIO                  BIOSPHERE (organisms, ecosystems)

9          ANT                 ANTHROPOSPHERE (built environment, human settlements)

Supergroup      2             HUMAN ACTIVITIES AND PRODUCTS, EFFECTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT

10        CHE                 CHEMISTRY, SUBSTANCES, PROCESSES

11        PHY                  PHYSICAL ASPECTS, NOISE, VIBRATIONS, RADIATIONS

12        ENE                  ENERGY

13        RSC                  RESOURCES (utilisation of resources)

14        PRD                 PRODUCTS, MATERIALS

15        AGR                 AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY; ANIMAL HUSBANDRY; FISHERY

16        IND                  INDUSTRY, CRAFTS; TECHNOLOGY; EQUIPMENTS

17        SER                  TRADE, SERVICES

18        TRA                 TRAFFIC, TRANSPORTATION

19        REC                 RECREATION, TOURISM

20        WAS                 WASTES, POLLUTANTS, POLLUTION

21        EFF                   EFFECTS, IMPACTS

Supergroup      3             SOCIAL ASPECTS, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY MEASURES

22        ECO                ECONOMICS, FINANCE

23        LEG                LEGISLATION, NORMS, CONVENTIONS

24        ADM              ADMINISTRATION, MANAGEMENT, POLICY, POLITICS, INSTITUTIONS, PLANNING

25        ENP                ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

26        INF                 INFORMATION, EDUCATION, CULTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS

27        RES                RESEARCH, SCIENCES

28        HEA                HEALTH, NUTRITION

29        SAF                 RISKS, SAFETY

30        SOC                SOCIETY

Accessory Groups

            GEN               GENERAL TERMS

            FUN                FUNCTIONAL TERMS

            PER                PERSONNEL

            ACT                ACTS

            PRO                PROGRAMMES

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* Neutral number

5. List of Themes

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* Neutral number