A Survey of Volunteered Open Geo-Knowledge Bases in the Semantic Web

Over the past decade, rapid advances in web technologies, coupled with innovative models of spatial data collection and consumption, have generated a robust growth in geo-referenced information, resulting in spatial information overload. Increasing 'geographic intelligence' in traditional text-based information retrieval has become a prominent approach to respond to this issue and to fulfill users' spatial information needs. Numerous efforts in the Semantic Geospatial Web, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), and the Linking Open Data initiative have converged in a constellation of open knowledge bases, freely available online. In this article, we survey these open knowledge bases, focusing on their geospatial dimension. Particular attention is devoted to the crucial issue of the quality of geo-knowledge bases, as well as of crowdsourced data. A new knowledge base, the OpenStreetMap Semantic Network, is outlined as our contribution to this area. Research directions in information integration and Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) are then reviewed, with a critical discussion of their current limitations and future prospects

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on Digital Librarie

Open Data Platform for Knowledge Access in Plant Health Domain : VESPA Mining

Important data are locked in ancient literature. It would be uneconomic to produce these data again and today or to extract them without the help of text mining technologies. Vespa is a text mining project whose aim is to extract data on pest and crops interactions, to model and predict attacks on crops, and to reduce the use of pesticides. A few attempts proposed an agricultural information access. Another originality of our work is to parse documents with a dependency of the document architecture

Cross-lingual RDF thesauri interlinking

lesnikova2016aInternational audienceVarious lexical resources are being published in RDF. To enhance the usability of these resources, identical resources in different data sets should be linked. If lexical resources are described in different natural languages, then techniques to deal with multilinguality are required for interlinking. In this paper, we evaluate machine translation for interlinking concepts, i.e., generic entities named with a common noun or term. In our previous work, the evaluated method has been applied on named entities. We conduct two experiments involving different thesauri in different languages. The first experiment involves concepts from the TheSoz multilingual thesaurus in three languages: English, French and German. The second experiment involves concepts from the EuroVoc and AGROVOC thesauri in English and Chinese respectively. Our results demonstrate that machine translation can be beneficial for cross-lingual thesauri interlining independently of a dataset structure

Cross-lingual RDF thesauri interlinking

lesnikova2016aInternational audienceVarious lexical resources are being published in RDF. To enhance the usability of these resources, identical resources in different data sets should be linked. If lexical resources are described in different natural languages, then techniques to deal with multilinguality are required for interlinking. In this paper, we evaluate machine translation for interlinking concepts, i.e., generic entities named with a common noun or term. In our previous work, the evaluated method has been applied on named entities. We conduct two experiments involving different thesauri in different languages. The first experiment involves concepts from the TheSoz multilingual thesaurus in three languages: English, French and German. The second experiment involves concepts from the EuroVoc and AGROVOC thesauri in English and Chinese respectively. Our results demonstrate that machine translation can be beneficial for cross-lingual thesauri interlining independently of a dataset structure

Dividing the Ontology Alignment Task with Semantic Embeddings and Logic-based Modules

Large ontologies still pose serious challenges to state-of-the-art ontology alignment systems. In this paper we present an approach that combines a neural embedding model and logic-based modules to accurately divide an input ontology matching task into smaller and more tractable matching (sub)tasks. We have conducted a comprehensive evaluation using the datasets of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative. The results are encouraging and suggest that the proposed method is adequate in practice and can be integrated within the workflow of systems unable to cope with very large ontologies

Algorithms for cross-lingual data interlinking

lesnikova2015aInternational audienceLinked data technologies enable to publish and link structured data on the Web. Although RDF is not about text, many RDF data providers publish their data in their own language. Cross-lingual interlinking consists of discov- ering links between identical resources across data sets in different languages. In this report, we present a general framework for interlinking resources in different languages based on associating a specific representation to each re- source and computing a similarity between these representations. We describe and evaluate three methods using this approach: the two first methods are based on gathering virtual documents and translating them and the latter one represent them as bags of identifiers from a multilingual resource (BabelNet)

An ontology to standardize research output of nutritional epidemiology : from paper-based standards to linked content

Background: The use of linked data in the Semantic Web is a promising approach to add value to nutrition research. An ontology, which defines the logical relationships between well-defined taxonomic terms, enables linking and harmonizing research output. To enable the description of domain-specific output in nutritional epidemiology, we propose the Ontology for Nutritional Epidemiology (ONE) according to authoritative guidance for nutritional epidemiology. Methods: Firstly, a scoping review was conducted to identify existing ontology terms for reuse in ONE. Secondly, existing data standards and reporting guidelines for nutritional epidemiology were converted into an ontology. The terms used in the standards were summarized and listed separately in a taxonomic hierarchy. Thirdly, the ontologies of the nutritional epidemiologic standards, reporting guidelines, and the core concepts were gathered in ONE. Three case studies were included to illustrate potential applications: (i) annotation of existing manuscripts and data, (ii) ontology-based inference, and (iii) estimation of reporting completeness in a sample of nine manuscripts. Results: Ontologies for food and nutrition (n = 37), disease and specific population (n = 100), data description (n = 21), research description (n = 35), and supplementary (meta) data description (n = 44) were reviewed and listed. ONE consists of 339 classes: 79 new classes to describe data and 24 new classes to describe the content of manuscripts. Conclusion: ONE is a resource to automate data integration, searching, and browsing, and can be used to assess reporting completeness in nutritional epidemiology

About the nature of Kansei information, from abstract to concrete

Designer’s expertise refers to the scientific fields of emotional design and kansei information. This paper aims to answer to a scientific major issue which is, how to formalize designer’s knowledge, rules, skills into kansei information systems. Kansei can be considered as a psycho-physiologic, perceptive, cognitive and affective process through a particular experience. Kansei oriented methods include various approaches which deal with semantics and emotions, and show the correlation with some design properties. Kansei words may include semantic, sensory, emotional descriptors, and also objects names and product attributes. Kansei levels of information can be seen on an axis going from abstract to concrete dimensions. Sociological value is the most abstract information positioned on this axis. Previous studies demonstrate the values the people aspire to drive their emotional reactions in front of particular semantics. This means that the value dimension should be considered in kansei studies. Through a chain of value-function-product attributes it is possible to enrich design generation and design evaluation processes. This paper describes some knowledge structures and formalisms we established according to this chain, which can be further used for implementing computer aided design tools dedicated to early design. These structures open to new formalisms which enable to integrate design information in a non-hierarchical way. The foreseen algorithmic implementation may be based on the association of ontologies and bag-of-words.AN