“Observation” has a lot of different meanings, even within the bio-semantics world. In BCO, we have been using the term observing process (http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/bco_0000003), as distinct from a specimen collection process. We agreed that bco:observing process should be a planned process with a data item as output. The input of an observing process is bco:material target of observation, which is similar to obi:material entity has role obi:evaluant role.
However, we were not certain that bco:observing process is necessarily equivalent to obi:assay. We would like to have a better understanding of the inputs of an assay, of RO's notions of direct and indirect input, and some other issues.
I will be posting more comments here we work on our understanding, and we hope to set up a joint BCO/OBI call sometime in the near future.
Note that bco:observing process already has subclasses for human observing process and machine observing process, and we need to coordinate those with OBI as well.
FYI, the BCO purl is broken
It sounds to me that observing process is clearly an assay. Whether it is
equivalent or a subclass depends on the precise definition. Similarly
bco:material
target of observation sounds to me to be in a similar relation with
evaluant role. For example, an example of usage attached to Assay is: "Count
of geese flying over a house.".
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Ramona Walls rwalls@users.sf.net wrote:
Related
OBI Terms:
#745This was discussed at the OBI call on June 6, 2016. The decision was to keep observing process in BCO, make it a subclass of of OBI:assay. Define as per use cases in BCO (where the assay does not sample or physically change the evaluant - i.e. no material processing involved). See also meeting minutes at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ccc_bYb3EVjVzC6wRxhjleAkQqYCHsO1z4P0Q_UVBgY/edit# and wiki page: http://obi-ontology.org/page/Observational_assays.
It appears that I don't have the power to close issue in this tracker. Will someone else please close?
issue solved on OBI dev call 2016-06-06