An Introduction to Question Answering over Linked Data

Unger C, Freitas A, Cimiano P. An Introduction to Question Answering over Linked Data. In: Koubarakis M, Stamou G, Stoilos G, et al., eds. Reasoning Web. Reasoning on the Web in the Big Data Era: 10th International Summer School 2014, Athens, Greece, September 8-13, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014: 100--140

Linked data approach in accessing geospatial big data

Today, linked data is frequently associated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as its technology stack is utilized in alleviating geospatial data integration issue. Geospatial data have become ubiquitous as they have emerged everywhere and these data can be geo-referenced. One of the types of georeferenced data that is lacking in Malaysia is the insufficient availability of Malaysian oceanographic data. It is a great relief to know that most of the earth observation agencies have granted access into their data obtained from satellite altimetry. Consequently, the exponential growth of geospatial data as well as its complexity and diversity has led to big data problem and caused information sharing and exchange on the web becoming more complicated. To resolve this issue, linked data should be used in handling geospatial big data. Linked data is one of the best practices for exposing, sharing, publishing and connecting the structured data on the web. This study explored linked data as an approach to provide access to the Malaysian physical oceanography datasets on the web, which would allow the data to be standardized in a machine-readable format. The research reviewed the existing software tools used in publishing linked data, identified an appropriate software tool to generate Resource Description Framework (RDF) presenting geographical data and built a physical oceanography data website based on linked data principles. Initially, document analysis was conducted to review the existing linked data tools that have been used for geospatial data. Various scholarly articles, journals, tutorials and web pages were used as references to investigate the use of linked data tools. Based on the review, five software tools, namely Geometry2RDF, TripleGeo, Datalift, OpenLink Virtuoso and KARMA were identified as the appropriate tools to generate the RDF. Each of this software tool has its own capabilities and functionalities. Next, the tools were compared with one another based on literature review to get the best possible tool that can manage georeferenced oceanographic data. After the comparison, this study identified the best software tool to transform the shapefile into the RDF format was Datalift. Finally, a web-based information system was built to publish the linked data to data interlinking and sharing by web users. In conclusion, this study has introduced an alternative way to publish and access geospatial data, particularly related to physical oceanography datasets using linked data principles. Using such an approach would facilitate stakeholders and unveil information within the big data, thus enriching the discovery of geospatial information on the web

Towards human-oriented design, architecture and urbanism: shifts in education and practice.

Redacted versionThe scope of this piece of work is to reflect upon a series of past and recent publications as well as those in progress referring to innovations in architectural education which has already led and/or might lead to major shifts in future practices. This is an opportunity for the author to reflect on concepts and ideas for the future of architecture which is currently undergoing innovative developments by embracing new theories and enduring professional formation according to contemporary trends. This reflective work has been based on publication of research, including ongoing editorial work related to this topic. The author’s ideas and philosophy on human-oriented design and fractal patterns of social life has embraced dynamics of urban developments in modern and future cities. She has succeeded in considering, uniquely interpreting and further developing ideas and theories of established authors, such as Christopher Alexander’s concepts on patterns and principles of design and Nikos Salingaros’ thermodynamic models of the built environment. The author was inspired by teachers and renowned scholars in history, philosophy and practices of architecture; her own teachers’ experiences and their teaching had offered a singular momentum in her personal career path. This long process started when her teachers succeeded in placing urbanism and architecture side by side inside the Faculty of Architecture of Florence back in the 1970s. Hence the author reflects not only on recent publications, but also on others that have been published in the last decade or so. In this report it is evident that materials produced during these years have been essential and invaluable for her later endeavours in learning, teaching and the training of designers and architects in Great Britain and beyond.Fees: 50% School of Engineering and Technology& 50% Self-funde

Entities with quantities : extraction, search, and ranking

Quantities are more than numeric values. They denote measures of the world’s entities such as heights of buildings, running times of athletes, energy efficiency of car models or energy production of power plants, all expressed in numbers with associated units. Entity-centric search and question answering (QA) are well supported by modern search engines. However, they do not work well when the queries involve quantity filters, such as searching for athletes who ran 200m under 20 seconds or companies with quarterly revenue above $2 Billion. State-of-the-art systems fail to understand the quantities, including the condition (less than, above, etc.), the unit of interest (seconds, dollar, etc.), and the context of the quantity (200m race, quarterly revenue, etc.). QA systems based on structured knowledge bases (KBs) also fail as quantities are poorly covered by state-of-the-art KBs. In this dissertation, we developed new methods to advance the state-of-the-art on quantity knowledge extraction and search.Zahlen sind mehr als nur numerische Werte. Sie beschreiben Maße von Entitäten wie die Höhe von Gebäuden, die Laufzeit von Sportlern, die Energieeffizienz von Automodellen oder die Energieerzeugung von Kraftwerken - jeweils ausgedrückt durch Zahlen mit zugehörigen Einheiten. Entitätszentriete Anfragen und direktes Question-Answering werden von Suchmaschinen häufig gut unterstützt. Sie funktionieren jedoch nicht gut, wenn die Fragen Zahlenfilter beinhalten, wie z. B. die Suche nach Sportlern, die 200m unter 20 Sekunden gelaufen sind, oder nach Unternehmen mit einem Quartalsumsatz von über 2 Milliarden US-Dollar. Selbst moderne Systeme schaffen es nicht, Quantitäten, einschließlich der genannten Bedingungen (weniger als, über, etc.), der Maßeinheiten (Sekunden, Dollar, etc.) und des Kontexts (200-Meter-Rennen, Quartalsumsatz usw.), zu verstehen. Auch QA-Systeme, die auf strukturierten Wissensbanken (“Knowledge Bases”, KBs) aufgebaut sind, versagen, da quantitative Eigenschaften von modernen KBs kaum erfasst werden. In dieser Dissertation werden neue Methoden entwickelt, um den Stand der Technik zur Wissensextraktion und -suche von Quantitäten voranzutreiben. Unsere Hauptbeiträge sind die folgenden: • Zunächst präsentieren wir Qsearch [Ho et al., 2019, Ho et al., 2020] – ein System, das mit erweiterten Fragen mit Quantitätsfiltern umgehen kann, indem es Hinweise verwendet, die sowohl in der Frage als auch in den Textquellen vorhanden sind. Qsearch umfasst zwei Hauptbeiträge. Der erste Beitrag ist ein tiefes neuronales Netzwerkmodell, das für die Extraktion quantitätszentrierter Tupel aus Textquellen entwickelt wurde. Der zweite Beitrag ist ein neuartiges Query-Matching-Modell zum Finden und zur Reihung passender Tupel. • Zweitens, um beim Vorgang heterogene Tabellen einzubinden, stellen wir QuTE [Ho et al., 2021a, Ho et al., 2021b] vor – ein System zum Extrahieren von Quantitätsinformationen aus Webquellen, insbesondere Ad-hoc Webtabellen in HTML-Seiten. Der Beitrag von QuTE umfasst eine Methode zur Verknüpfung von Quantitäts- und Entitätsspalten, für die externe Textquellen genutzt werden. Zur Beantwortung von Fragen kontextualisieren wir die extrahierten Entitäts-Quantitäts-Paare mit informativen Hinweisen aus der Tabelle und stellen eine neue Methode zur Konsolidierung und verbesserteer Reihung von Antwortkandidaten durch Inter-Fakten-Konsistenz vor. • Drittens stellen wir QL [Ho et al., 2022] vor – eine Recall-orientierte Methode zur Anreicherung von Knowledge Bases (KBs) mit quantitativen Fakten. Moderne KBs wie Wikidata oder YAGO decken viele Entitäten und ihre relevanten Informationen ab, übersehen aber oft wichtige quantitative Eigenschaften. QL ist frage-gesteuert und basiert auf iterativem Lernen mit zwei Hauptbeiträgen, um die KB-Abdeckung zu verbessern. Der erste Beitrag ist eine Methode zur Expansion von Fragen, um einen größeren Pool an Faktenkandidaten zu erfassen. Der zweite Beitrag ist eine Technik zur Selbstkonsistenz durch Berücksichtigung der Werteverteilungen von Quantitäten

Human Rights under risk in times of economic crisis: emphasis on human dignity

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2018.Η εργασία καταδεικνύει την επίδραση που είχε η οικονομική κρίση που έπληξε την Ελλάδα από το 2010 και έπειτα στην απόλαυση των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων. Μέσα από την παρουσίαση των θεμελιωδών για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα κειμένων αλλά και την σκιαγράφηση των βασικών σημείων του χρονοδιαγράμματος της κρίσης, αναλύεται η βασική νομολογία της περιόδου και η εξέλιξή της, ενώ έμφαση δίνεται στην ανθρώπινη αξιοπρέπεια, την έννοια της, τη σύνδεση με τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα αλλά και πως ειδικότερα η κρίση στην οικονομίας επέδρασε σε αυτή

Cultural Heritage Storytelling, Engagement and Management in the Era of Big Data and the Semantic Web

The current Special Issue launched with the aim of further enlightening important CH areas, inviting researchers to submit original/featured multidisciplinary research works related to heritage crowdsourcing, documentation, management, authoring, storytelling, and dissemination. Audience engagement is considered very important at both sites of the CH production–consumption chain (i.e., push and pull ends). At the same time, sustainability factors are placed at the center of the envisioned analysis. A total of eleven (11) contributions were finally published within this Special Issue, enlightening various aspects of contemporary heritage strategies placed in today’s ubiquitous society. The finally published papers are related but not limited to the following multidisciplinary topics:Digital storytelling for cultural heritage;Audience engagement in cultural heritage;Sustainability impact indicators of cultural heritage;Cultural heritage digitization, organization, and management;Collaborative cultural heritage archiving, dissemination, and management;Cultural heritage communication and education for sustainable development;Semantic services of cultural heritage;Big data of cultural heritage;Smart systems for Historical cities – smart cities;Smart systems for cultural heritage sustainability

Kremlin Calling?: An investigation into the geopolitical narratives of selected European radical right parties regarding Russia

Rising to prominence following the 2008 financial crisis, the European radical right has become a popular topic within both mainstream and academic debate. Now boasting a powerful presence in many European states, the political tradition has presented a myriad of existential threats to the continent’s liberal status quo. Among these new challenges is a widespread desire to reassess relations with Russia. Also eager to take advantage of Europe’s ongoing uncertainty, the Kremlin has shown great interest in engaging with radical right parties as part of its geopolitical resurgence. This relationship has drawn the attention of a fledgling body of literature, which has noted Russia’s willingness to fund and support these groups. Despite this, research has yet to investigate why exactly many radical right parties have been willing to engage with Moscow. This is all the more surprising given the literature’s discussion of a shared illiberalism, with studies continuing to focus solely on Russia’s export of such beliefs. As such, this study attempts to rectify this issue by directly engaging with Russia policies found in the literature of four radical right parties. Such information is subject to a methodology embracing both critical geopolitics and narrative analysis, with radical right theory lending itself to an explicitly ‘spatiotemporal’ understanding of international relations. The study finds that rather than embracing sheer opportunism, the parties have incorporated Russia into vivid narratives bound by desires to “revolt against the modern world”. Simultaneously, national circumstances ensure that this ‘template’ has been manipulated according to subjective needs, with party narratives now helping to challenge the seemingly ‘inevitable’ nature of the radical right-Russia relationship.https://www.ester.ee/record=b5380294*es

The Anthropology of Security

In a post-Cold War world of political unease and economic crisis, processes of securitisation are transforming nation-states, their citizens and non-citizens in profound ways. The book shows how contemporary Europe is now home to a vast security industry which uses biometric identification systems, CCTV and quasi-military techniques to police migrants and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This is the first collection of anthropological studies of security with a particular but not exclusive emphasis on Europe. The Anthropology of Security draws together studies on the lived experiences of security and policing from the perspective of those most affected in their everyday lives. The anthropological perspectives in this volume stretch from the frontlines of policing and counter-terrorism to border control