Experimentation as a service over semantically interoperable Internet of Things testbeds

Infrastructures enabling experimental assessment of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are scarce. Moreover, such infrastructures are typically bound to a specific application domain, thus, not facilitating the testing of solutions with a horizontal approach. This paper presents a platform that supports Experimentation as s Service (EaaS) over a federation of IoT testbeds. This platform brings two major advances. Firstly, it leverages semantic web technologies to enable interoperability so that testbed agnostic access to the underlying facilities is allowed. Secondly, a set of tools ease both the experimentation workflow and the federation of other IoT deployments, independently of their domain of interest. Apart from the platform specification, the paper presents how this design has been actually instantiated into a cloud-based EaaS platform that has been used for supporting a wide variety of novel experiments targeting different research and innovation challenges. In this respect, the paper summarizes some of the experiences from these experiments and the key performance metrics that this instance of the platform has exhibited during the experimentation

A conceptual model for semantically-based e-government portals

Issues of semantic interoperability and service integration for e-government portals are the domain of interest of the present paper. We propose a Conceptual Model for One-Stop e-Government Portals based on the Semantic Web Service technology. We describe our research into building the three basic ontologies and their integration with standard ontologies. The result is a project-independent reusable model. At the same time, we outline a simple methodology for applying the proposed conceptual model into a specific scenario

Interoperability and FAIRness through a novel combination of Web technologies

Data in the life sciences are extremely diverse and are stored in a broad spectrum of repositories ranging from those designed for particular data types (such as KEGG for pathway data or UniProt for protein data) to those that are general-purpose (such as FigShare, Zenodo, Dataverse or EUDAT). These data have widely different levels of sensitivity and security considerations. For example, clinical observations about genetic mutations in patients are highly sensitive, while observations of species diversity are generally not. The lack of uniformity in data models from one repository to another, and in the richness and availability of metadata descriptions, makes integration and analysis of these data a manual, time-consuming task with no scalability. Here we explore a set of resource-oriented Web design patterns for data discovery, accessibility, transformation, and integration that can be implemented by any general- or special-purpose repository as a means to assist users in finding and reusing their data holdings. We show that by using off-the-shelf technologies, interoperability can be achieved atthe level of an individual spreadsheet cell. We note that the behaviours of this architecture compare favourably to the desiderata defined by the FAIR Data Principles, and can therefore represent an exemplar implementation of those principles. The proposed interoperability design patterns may be used to improve discovery and integration of both new and legacy data, maximizing the utility of all scholarly outputs

OntoCR: A CEN/ISO-13606 clinical repository based on ontologies

Objective: To design a new semantically interoperable clinical repository, based on ontologies, conforming to CEN/ISO 13606 standard. Materials and Methods: The approach followed is to extend OntoCRF, a framework for the development of clinical repositories based on ontologies. The meta-model of OntoCRF has been extended by incorporating an OWL model integrating CEN/ISO 13606, ISO 21090 and SNOMED CT structure. Results: This approach has demonstrated a complete evaluation cycle involving the creation of the meta-model in OWL format, the creation of a simple test application, and the communication of standardized extracts to another organization. Discussion: Using a CEN/ISO 13606 based system, an indefinite number of archetypes can be merged (and reused) to build new applications. Our approach, based on the use of ontologies, maintains data storage independent of content specification. With this approach, relational technology can be used for storage, maintaining extensibility capabilities. Conclusions: The present work demonstrates that it is possible to build a native CEN/ISO 13606 repository for the storage of clinical data. We have demonstrated semantic interoperability of clinical information using CEN/ISO 13606 extracts

Applying semantic web services to enterprise web

Enterprise Web provides a convenient, extendable, integrated platform for information sharing and knowledge management. However, it still has many drawbacks due to complexity and increasing information glut, as well as the heterogeneity of the information processed. Research in the field of Semantic Web Services has shown the possibility of adding higher level of semantic functionality onto the top of current Enterprise Web, enhancing usability and usefulness of resource, enabling decision support and automation. This paper aims to explore the use of Semantic Web Services in Enterprise Web and discuss the Semantic Web Services (SWS) approach for designing Enterprise Web applications. A Semantic Web Service oriented model is presented, in which resources and services are described by ontology, and processed through Semantic Web Service, allowing integrated administration, interoperability and automated reasoning

Architectural Patterns for the Semantic Grid

The Semantic Grid reference architecture, S-OGSA, includes semantic provisioning services that are able to produce semantic annotations of Grid resources, and semantically aware Gridservices that are able to exploit those annotations in various ways. In this paper we describe the dynamic aspects of S-OGSA by presenting the typical patterns of interaction among these services. A use case for a Grid meta-scheduling service is used to illustrate how the patterns are applied in practice

A linked data compliant framework for dynamic and web-scale consumption of web services

The While Semantic Web Services (SWS) research aims at automating Web service tasks such as discovery, orchestration and execution, its take-up is very limited so far. This is due to several reasons, such as inherent complexity of existing SWS frameworks and the considerable costs involved in creating correct SWS descriptions. In addition, while semantics are in use to enable tasks such as discovery, interaction between service consumers, providers and brokering environments is still not supported by semantic message descriptions. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has produced a set of established principles for sharing and describing data, such as RDF as representation language and the integral use of dereferencable URIs. In this paper we propose to apply those principles to expose Web services and Web APIs and introduce a framework in which service registries as well as services contribute to the automation of service discovery, and hence, workload is distributed more efficiently. This is achieved by developing a Linked Data compliant Web services framework with that communicate with semi-centralised registries but compute their suitability for a given request themselves. All communications among different framework components are using RDF-based message protocols including service input and output. This framework aims at optimizing load balance and performance by dynamically assembling services at run time in a massively distributed Web environment

Extending FAIR to FAIREr: Cognitive Interoperability and the Human Explorability of Data and Metadata

Making data and metadata FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) has become an important objective in research and industry, and knowledge graphs and ontologies have been cornerstones in many going-FAIR strategies. In this process, however, human-actionability of data and metadata has been lost sight of. Here, in the first part, I discuss two issues exemplifying the lack of human-actionability in knowledge graphs and I suggest adding the Principle of human Explorability to extend FAIR to the FAIREr Guiding Principles. Moreover, in its interoperability framework and as part of its GoingFAIR strategy, the European Open Science Cloud initiative distinguishes between technical, semantic, organizational, and legal interoperability and I argue to add cognitive interoperability. In the second part, I provide a short introduction to semantic units and discuss how they increase the human explorability and cognitive interoperability of knowledge graphs. Semantic units structure a knowledge graph into identifiable and semantically meaningful subgraphs, each represented with its own resource that instantiates a corresponding semantic unit class. Three categories of semantic units can be distinguished: Statement units model individual propositions, compound units are semantically meaningful collections of semantic units, and question units model questions that translate into queries. I conclude with discussing how semantic units provide a framework for the development of innovative user interfaces that support exploring and accessing information in the graph by reducing its complexity to what currently interests the user, thereby significantly increasing the cognitive interoperability and thus human-actionability of knowledge graphs

A commentary on standardization in the Semantic Web, Common Logic and MultiAgent Systems

Given the ubiquity of the Web, the Semantic Web (SW) offers MultiAgent Systems (MAS) a most wide-ranging platform by which they could intercommunicate. It can be argued however that MAS require levels of logic that the current Semantic Web has yet to provide. As ISO Common Logic (CL) ISO/IEC IS 24707:2007 provides a firstorder logic capability for MAS in an interoperable way, it seems natural to investigate how CL may itself integrate with the SW thus providing a more expressive means by which MAS can interoperate effectively across the SW. A commentary is accordingly presented on how this may be achieved. Whilst it notes that certain limitations remain to be addressed, the commentary proposes that standardising the SW with CL provides the vehicle by which MAS can achieve their potential.</p