aos ciard-china
DESCRIPTION
The presentation I gave as visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of ScienceTRANSCRIPT
2009-10-21 Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations 1
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Interoperability in Agricultural Information Systems:The necessity for International collaborationAbstract: In a networked world with distributed repositories of knowledge interoperability becomes a key issue. Otherwise the distributed repositories will not become nodes of a global network, but will stay isolated silos. Interoperability is often understood only in terms of technological interoperability, protocols for data transfer, webservices and similar. Whereas the internet has created quite a network of interoperable technology based on the IP and HTTP, there is a enormous lack of semantic interoperability. Semantic Interoperability stands not only for the mediation of meaning between different repositories but stand also for the Interoperability between cultures and languages. FAO through Agrovoc and the Agricultural Ontology Service is working for 8 years to create a service that gives such interoperability standards to the community. For some years the CIARD initiative (Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development) is aiming to create a community of practice that promotes common standards, tools and methodologies. The aim is to make a leap forward in the global availability of agricultural information.
2009-10-21 Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations 2
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Outline FAO' mission Development of the Web Registries for Semantic Standards The Agrovoc Concept Server CIARD – a community of practice for global
accessibility of Agricultural Research and Technology Knowledge
2009-10-21 Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations 3
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
http://www.fao.org
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Number and percentage of undernourished persons
2004-2006: 873 million (13%)
2000-2002: 857 million (14%)
1995-1997 :825million (14%)
1990-1992 :845million (16%)
1979-1981 853million (19%)
1969-1971: 878million (24%)
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Access to global knowledge and
international collaboration is one of the key factors to
combat hunger and poverty
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
The Development of
the Web
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Credits: Hynchliffe
2009-10-21 Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations 13
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Availability is not enough
Complex information needs for agricultural development through research and innovation cannot be met by simply making information available.
HTML HTMLHTML
Users
HTMLHTMLHTML
We need to know if a certain technology has been used in a specific country and in a dryland area for a specific crop and if there are related projects completed or ongoing, who id funding them and where we can find the project outputs
TECABest practices
Country profiles CARIS WISARD AGRIS
HTML
Country NARS
HTML
ICARDA
HTML
AiDA
HTML
Crop database
HTML
OPACs
Disconnected repositories
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Credits: various sources
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Credits: Tim Berners Lee
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
http://www.linkeddata.com
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3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
The Linked Data Principles
1. Use URIs as names for things
2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names
3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful RDF information
4. Include RDF statements that link to other URIs so that they can discover related things
2009-10-21 Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations 18
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
The Need for Vocabulary Registries
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Moving Vocabularies to the Network Level
Requirements:
• Expressive data structures
• Vocabularies encoded for the Web
• Access mechanisms for search and retrieval
• URI accessible content
• Use of open protocols and standards
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Encoding Mechanisms
XML (Extensible Markup Language) A data-interchange format for custom markup
languages.
RDF (Resource Description Framework) A data-interchange format for the representation
of graph models.
JSON (Javascript Object Notation) A data-interchange format based on a subset of
the JavaScript Programming Language defined by the ECMA-262 3rd Edition standard.
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CABContent
Query Expansion
Searching Heterogeneous Collections
Metadata Creation
Agrovoc
Geopolitical Ontology
AgMes Schemes
Domain
Ontologies
Vocabularies Registry
Web Services
Credits: Diane V. Goetz
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Agricultural Ontology Service
Multi-partner initiative, 2001 Facilitate the provision of services in the
agricultural domain with the use of semantic technologies
Resources and standards KOS and mappings, Metadata Elements and
Schemes Registries and Ontology Server Tools and Publication, ……
Sharing, Interoperability
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
What is AGROVOC? AGROVOC is a multilingual structured
thesaurus Covers all the subject fields in agriculture,
forestry, fisheries, food and related domains (e.g. environment)
Consists of words or expressions (terms), in different languages and organized in relationships
Relations (e.g. “broader”, “narrower”, and “related”) are used to identify and connect terms
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Who uses AGROVOC?
AGROVOC is used all over the world, mostly for indexing and retrieving data in agricultural information systems
Statistical value show an average hits of 5,400 on any weekday to AGROVOC Thesaurus
About 90 countries regularly access AGROVOC online
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Why is AGROVOC multilingual?
AGROVOC is used world-wide, so it is imperative to translate the thesaurus into as many languages as possible
This helps the users to index or search information sources in their own language
It is available in 6 official languages of FAO - English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Russian
Also available in other languages - Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, Thai, Slovak, German, Hungarian, Polish, Persian, Italian, Malay, Telegu, Hindi, Turkish, and Lao
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
How is AGROVOC structured?
AGROVOC is made up of terms, which consist of one or more words representing always one and the same concept
For each term, a word block is displayed, showing the hierarchical and non-hierarchical relation to other terms: BT, NT ,RT, USE/UF
Scope notes are used in AGROVOC to clarify the meaning and the context of terms
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
More meaning to AGROVOC relations A thesaurus has equivalence (USE/UF),
broader term (BT), narrower term (NT), and related term (RT) relationships
There is a need of an extended set of relationships to perform more granular and more consistent indexing
With this extension, more effective searching and browsing for users is possible
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Example
The term "pollution" can have association with other terms Ex: "pollutants" is formally associated with the
term "pollution" using the Related Term (RT) relationship
In practice, we may be able to indicate explicitly that "pollutants" cause "pollution“
=> Relationship becomes more meaningful than simply
portraying them as Related Terms (RT)
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
What more semantics meansMAIZE
UF corn NT flint maize NT popcorn NT sweet corn
MILKNT Milk Fat NT ColostrumNT Cow Milk
International Fund for Agricultural Development
UF IFAD
MAIZEsynonym cornsuperclass-of flint maize used-to-make popcorn hybridized-into sweet corn
MILKingredient Milk Fat ingredient Colostrumsuperclass-of Cow Milk
International Fund for Agricultural
Development
acronym IFAD
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
From a traditional thesaurus to the Agricultural Ontology Service Concept Server
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Expressing AGROVOC in OWL
to facilitate its use for developing agricultural domain knowledge organization systems, including ontologies, without requiring the terminologist to start from scratch
to enable the development of applications using semantic technologies
to enable interoperability between applications using these ontologies
to better support information management for the web environment
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
AGROVOC Concept Server
It is a one-stop shop for terminological knowledge related to agriculture in general
A knowledge base of related concepts organized in ontological relationships (hierarchical, associative, equivalence)
Is a concept/term/string based system Contains 600000 terms in around 20 languages. Concepts may be also organized in multiple
categories.
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Three levels of representation
Concepts (the abstract meaning) Ex: ‘rice’ in the sense of a plant,
Terms (language-specific lexical forms) Ex: ‘Rice’, ‘Riz’, ‘Arroz’, ‘ ’稻米 , or ‘Paddy’
Term variants (the range of forms that can occur for each term) Ex: ‘O. sativa’ or ‘Oryza Sativa’, ‘Organization’ or
Organisation’
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Semantic Relationships
Concept to Concept
isA (hierarchy), isPestOf, hasPest
Concept to Term
has_lexicalization (links concepts to their lexical realizations)
Term to Term
isSynonymOf, isTranslationOf, hasAcronym, hasAbbreviation
Term to String
hasSpellingVariant, hasSingular
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
The Workbench Is a web-based working environment for
managing the AGROVOC Concept Server Facilitate the collaborative editing of multilingual
terminology and semantic concept information It includes administration and group management
features It includes workflows for maintenance, validation
and quality assurance of the data pool The CS is accessible freely to everybody to
facilitates collaborative editing
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
In Action..........
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
http://www.ciard.net
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
The purpose of CIARD: think global, act local• “To facilitate an international community of practice in
agricultural science and technology information that collaboratively develops common standards, shares knowledge, and contributes to effective and coherent institutional approaches.”
• CIARD partners will:– combine/align efforts in common international approaches – work with their own priorities and constraints – maximise the return on public investments
• enable local/national innovation systems and services• harness support of regional/international systems– “To facilitate an international community of practice in agricultural
science and technology information that collaboratively develops common standards, shares knowledge, and contributes to effective and coherent institutional approaches.”
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CABA new partnership for truly accessible information
make agricultural research information and knowledge truly accessible to all
to enhance the use of agricultural research information by all actorsto make key public organizations more responsible for their information servicesto adhere to common international standards and open applicationsto create user centered information servicesto develop and share good practicesto act local and globally
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
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http://www.fao.org/agris
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Knowledge Processes and Repositories
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.... and related Application Profiles/Ontologies Document like Objects (Publications)
Events
News
Experts
Organizations
Projects
Learning Objects
Research Data
.......................
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
http://www.ciardring.net
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
What you can build out of it
Services that offer a common browsing or searching interface to different sources
Integrated services providing relations between entities (organizations, projects, experts, documents) through semantic-web technologies
Services that interface the different knowledge organization systems (KOS) used by different sources
Services providing advanced services like digests, bibliographies, best practices, surveys etc.
etc...
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
CIARD RING Global Directories Need for improved global access to information, but centralization of information
always failed! Distributed architectures minimize duplication in information storage and flow
and improve the reliability of the information provided Distributed storage and maintenance of data, The data describing any
information object (document, organization, project, event etc.) are stored decentralized at the lowest level possible
They are accessible as XML/RDF records based on a specific metadata set Centralized directories / registries to access the distributed sources Access to these distributed files is facilitated by a community registry of
participating institutions
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
RING Exemple 1: Screenshot: RDF feed
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Ring Exemple 2: Context sensitive linking
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
RING Exemple 2: Inclusion of Knowledge Models
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
CIARD RING: value added services
CARIS / WISARD
Users
We need to know if a certain technology has been used in a specific country and in a dryland area for a specific crop and if there are related projects currently ongoing and where we can find the project outputs?
TECABest practicesCountry
profiles
AGRIS
Country NARS
ICARDA
AiDA
Crop database
Geo
-on
tolo
gy
Crop ontology
Organizations Directory
Agrovocgateway gateway
gatewayOA
gatewayOPAC
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Conclusions No semantic Web without agreed vocabularies
Agreed vocabularies will exist only within communities of practice – we need to build these communities – CIARD is the practical proposal
We need Registries of those agreed vocabularies
FAO offers AIMS/AOS as the global gateway to agreed vocabularies in Agriculture
FAO offers the AGROVOC CS Workbench as an open Source Tool
We want your collaboration
Dr. Johannes Keizer, FAO of the United Nations
3rd Symposium on Rural Knowledge Ontology - CAASS CAB
Credits! My wonderful team in Rome
Margherita Sini for the slides on AGROVOC Valeria Pesce and Antonella Picarella for the slides on the
CIARD RING All others for many contributions
Our network all over the world Asanee Kawtrakul, Bangkok Dagobert Soergel, Buffalo Dan Brickley, Amsterdam Valentina Presutti, Rome An many, many others