The EBU has defined several sets of reference data organised in XML based classification schemes as a simplified version of the structure defined in ISO/IEC MPEG-7, and subsequently used by TV-Anytime (ETSI TS 102 822) and DVB.  The EBU Classification Schemes are supersets of existing classification schemes, several of them often originating from EBU ESCORT lists (except a few TV-Anytime CSs or very specific PBCore reference data lists).

The main advantage of SKOS is that it makes explicit the relationships between terms of a hierarchical Classification Scheme (in opposition to the implicit relationship expressed by intricated XML constructs).

The use of SKOS allows to find more global or refined classification matches. This can be used e.g. to re-orient a search. In the particular EBU's ESCORT use case, it can also be used to allow users to flexibly classify their content (from a rich classification scheme) while only a limited number of global classification references will be exploited in a questionnaire (resolution from a user definition to the nearer reference can now be processed automatically through machine processable reasoning).

Several EBU and TV-Anytime XML Classification Schemes have been 'SKOSified' through XSLT transformation. These transformations have been RDF/SKOS validated. When parsing these files using the SKOsed plugin of Protege, one can see that the original XML hierarchy has been successfully reconstructed.

The use of these reference data sets is governed by the following Creative Commons terms.