NeOn Project Lifecycle support for Ne tworked On tologies

1. NeOn Project Lifecycle support for Networked Ontologies Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service Workshop Bangalore, India Gauri Salokhe {gauri.salokhe@fao.org}

2. Roadmap • Background • NeOn goals and deliverables • The consortium and work packages • FAO’s contribution to the project • Fisheries case study

3. Background (1/3) • The growing availability of information has shifted the attention • from closed, relatively data-poor applications, • to mechanisms and applications for searching, integrating and making use of the vast amounts of information that are now available. • Ontologies provide the semantic underpinning enabling intelligent access, integration, sharing and use of data • XML DTDs and XML Schemas are sufficient for exchanging data between parties who have previously agreed on definitions but... • semantics are needed to achieve interoperability between numerous, independently developed and managed schemas.

4. Background (2/3) • Strategic investment: • Gartner ranks taxonomies/ontologies 3rd in the list of the top 10 technologies to invest in. => The challenge: • current methodologies and technologies are not adequate to support the whole application development lifecycle for new semantic applications.

5. Background (3/3) From “monolithic” to “networked” ontologies: “Semantic applications will rely on a network of contextualized ontologies, exhibiting local but not necessarily global consistency”. • Ontologies in the Semantic Web will be: • networked, • dynamically changing, • shared by many applications, and • strongly dependent on the context for which they have been developed or in which they are used.

6. NeOn goals The goals of NeOn are: • to support the development lifecycle of new generation of semantic applications; • to create a service-oriented open infrastructure, and associated methodology; • to extend the state of the art with cost-efficient solutions.

7. NeOn deliverables • A genericreference architecture, to provide a framework for integrating ontology lifecycle components. • The NeOn toolkit, to provide the first instance of a new generation of ontology management tools. • The NeOn methodology, to provide the necessary framework to organize and manage the development of semantic applications à-la NeOn.

8. The Consortium (1/2) • The NeOn project proposal was elaborated by the NeOn Consortium (FAO is a member). • It was submitted for funding to the European Commission’s 6th Framework, “Information Society Technologies (IST)”. • The project obtained the best ranking on the Priority 2: • IST-2004-2.4.7 Semantic-based knowledge and content systems. • 10 Million Euro were granted by the EC for the 4-year project.

9. The Consortium (2/2) • Academic and research: • Open University, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of Sheffield, Universitaet Koblenz-Landau; • Josef Stefan Institute (JSI), Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). • Small to medium enterprises: • Intelligent Software Components, S.A; Ontoprise GmbH. • Large industrial partners: • Software AG; Atos Origin, s.a.e. • International or non-profit organizations: • FAO and Asociación Española de Comercio Electrónico (AECE).

10. Project work packages

11. FAO’s contribution • Leads WP7: Ontology-driven fish stock depletion alert system (Case study) • Participates in WP5: NeOn lifecycle methodology and WP10: Dissemination of NeOn outcomes • Provides input and feedback to WP1-4 (R&D) and WP6 (infrastructure and tools).

12. WP7: Case study objectives Major goal: • To increase accessibility and interoperability of fisheries large data & multilingual information sets Objectives: • Create and maintain distributed ontologies in the fisheries domain; • Implement mechanisms for ontology learning, customized to the fishery domain; • Use fishery ontology modularization, maintenance and enrichment for a variety of sub-domains; • Exploit ontologies within web applications; and implement an alert system

13. WP7: Case study objectives Functionalities: • a search environment, • user customisation functionality based on user knowledge level, • user specification of updates (e.g. email notifications), • alerts based on country or species etc.

14. WP7: Deliverables & Tasks Fisheries resources KOS (Agrovoc, classifications) use Deliverables Fisheries Ontologies integrate FI Alert system use Knowledge discovery, Text mining tools use feed & maintain validity knowledge discovery tools Inventory of FI resources Tasks Alert system V1 Alert system v2 Fisheries ontologies Alert system architecture Ontology requirements Alert system requirements Eval. & recom. for research Eval. & recom. for research WP5 – NeOn lifecycle methodology WP1- Dynamics WP2 -Collaboration WP3 - Context WP4 - HCI WP6 – NeOn Infrastructure

15. Current situation in Fisheries • Good separation between data, metadata and reference data but... • Systems are very proprietary • models inhibit exporting data structures • protocols make it difficult to share data • Reference Tables Management System is outdated • poor relationships across thematic domains • slow • clunky interface • difficult to update

16. Advantages to NeOn for Fisheries • Replace Reference Tables Management System • latest technology • good management interface • establish relationships across domains • standardised data model • Fisheries Ontologies • modular • easier to expose reference data to others • standard protocols • possibility to interface with other ontologies • improved query system

17. Potential data sources • Possible data sources for Fisheries ontologies • FIGIS Schemas • Reference Tables Management System • ASFA Thesaurus • Agrovoc • FAOLEX • OneFish Topic Hierarchy • Aquaculture glossary • Data mining on text corpus and XML files • Possible data sources for Fisheries Stock Depletion Alert System • FIDI Statistics • Statistics from national and regional fishery bodies databases • Assessments from national and regional fishery bodies • FIGIS factsheets • Fishbase • OneFish • GlobeFish

18. Thank you for your attention • Additional information: http://www.neon-project.org/