BIM semantic-enrichment for built heritage representation

In the built heritage context, BIM has shown difficulties in representing and managing the large and complex knowledge related to non-geometrical aspects of the heritage. Within this scope, this paper focuses on a domain-specific semantic-enrichment of BIM methodology, aimed at fulfilling semantic representation requirements of built heritage through Semantic Web technologies. To develop this semantic-enriched BIM approach, this research relies on the integration of a BIM environment with a knowledge base created through information ontologies. The result is knowledge base system - and a prototypal platform - that enhances semantic representation capabilities of BIM application to architectural heritage processes. It solves the issue of knowledge formalization in cultural heritage informative models, favouring a deeper comprehension and interpretation of all the building aspects. Its open structure allows future research to customize, scale and adapt the knowledge base different typologies of artefacts and heritage activities

Semantic Integration Platform for Web Widgets’ Communication

Semantiline integratsiooni platvorm veebividinate suhtlemiseks on raamistik mashup-tüüpi veebirakendusel suhtlemise võimaldamiseks erinevate lõdvalt seotud veebikomponentide (veebividinate) vahel. Mashup-tüüpi rakendused kasutavad ja kombineerivad olemasolevaid veebiressursse, peamiselt erinevaid vidinaid (widgets ing. k.). Praegused mashup-platvormid ei toeta sõnumite vahetust vidinate vahel, kui vidinad on loodud ja hallatud erinevate loojate poolt ning ei mõista üksteiste poolt saadetud sõnumeid. See piirab tunduvalt keerukamate mashup-rakenduste loomist, kui ei ole võimalik kombineerida andmeid erinevatest allikatest (näiteks kolmandate osapoolte vidinate abil) nii, et neid allikaid oleks võimalik omavahel kombineerida, näiteks luua rakendusi, kus erinevad vidinad suudavad omavahel interaktiivselt andmeid vahetada. Antud magistritöö pakub välja lahenduse, mis integreeriks semantiliselt erinevate vidinate poolt saadetud andmed, nii et erinevad vidinad oleks võimelised omavahel andmeid jagama. Kõikide vidinate poolt vahetavate sõnumite andmeelemendid seotaks erinevate ontoloogia terminitega, mis võimaldaks sõnumite sisu masinloetavaks ja –arusaadavaks muuta, nii et saadetud sõnumitest oleks võimalik korjata kokku kõik vajalikud andmeelemendid, milleks oleks võimalik koostada uusi sõnumeid. See võimaldaks kombineerida erinevate vidinate poolt saadetud andmeid ja luua uusi sõnumeid erinevatest allikatest kombineeritud andmetest ning seejärel saata loodud sõnumid edasi nendele vidinatele, kelle jaoks on need andmed kasulikud. Lahendus vidinatevahelise koostöö hõlbustamiseks realiseeriti kasutades raamistikku OpenAjax Hub, mis on keskne sõnumite jaotur (hub ing. k.) lubamaks erinevatel vidinatel jaoturi külge kinnituda ja jaoturi kaudu omavahel sõnumeid vahetada. Jaoturi kasutamine võimaldab küll vidinatel omavahel sõnumeid vahetada, kuid ei lahenda probleemi, kui vidinad kasutavad sõnumite vahetamiseks erinevaid andmeformaate ja –struktuure. Lahendusena realiseeriti magistritöö raames eraldiseisev vidin (nimega Transformatsioonividin ehk Transformer Widget ing. k.), mis ühendub jaoturi külge ja agregeerib andmeelemente kõikidest sõnumitest, mida vidinad välja saadavad, ning genereerib uusi sõnumeid agregeeritud andmeelementidest, mida saab saata nendele vidinatele, mis oskavad kogutud andmeid vastu võtta ja neid kasutada. Magistrtöö raames defineeriti hulk reegleid, millega on võimalik kirjeldada sõnumite sisu ja määrata iga sõnumis esinev andmeelement vastavusse ontoloogia terminiga. Nende reeglite põhjal on võimalik luua rakenduse konfiguratsioone, mille põhjal transformatsioonividin oskab vidinate poolt saadetud sõnumeid interpreteerida ja neist andmeelemente koguda, mille põhjal uusi sõnumeid genereerida. Transformatsioonividina kasutatavust testiti näidisrakenduse peal, mis koosnes kolmest vidinast, mis omavahel otse suhelda ei osanud. Testi eesmärk oli teha kindlaks, kas transformatsioonividinat on võimalik sellelaadsete stsenaariumite puhul kasutada, kus olemasolevad vidinad ei saa üksteiste poolt saadetud sõnumitest aru. Testi käigus loodi näidisrakendusele sõnumite konfiguratsioon, mis kirjeldas vidinate poolt saadetud sõnumite semantika ja struktuuri, mis võimaldas transformasioonividinal vidinate poolt saadetud andmeid transformeerida vidinatele arusaadavale kujule, nii et kui üks vidin saatis sõnumi, mis sisaldas andmeid, mida mõni teine vidin oskas kasutada, siis transformatsioonividin genereeris saadud andmetest uue sõnumi ja saatis selle edasi vastavale vidinale. Näidisrakenduse test oli edukas ja kinnitas transformatsioonividina kasulikkust selliste probleemide lahendamisel.Semantic integration platform for web widgets communication is a framework for providing collaboration capabilities between loosely coupled Web components (called widgets) in a mashup-like Web application. Mashups are Web applications that allow reuse of excising resources by combining different widgets that use data from various sources in the Web. Current mashup platforms do not support collaboration between different widgets, especially if those widgets have been developed and maintained by different vendors and are not able to interpret messages sent by other widgets. This limits the creation of more sophisticated mashups if collaboration between different independent components is not possible where Web widgets could interactively share and exchange data between each other. This thesis tries to solve the problem of making the data published by a widget on a Web application available to all the other widgets on the Web application so that the widgets could share information with each other. That makes it possible to interactively combine data from various sources to allow collaboration between loosely coupled components on a Web application. The thesis proposes a solution for aggregating data from messages sent by different widgets to generate new messages to widgets which could use the combined data. The main problem is collecting useful data from the exchanged messages and transforming the collected data into new messages using various data structures and formats interpretable by widgets that are interested in that data. Integrating and sharing data from various sources is the main research problem in the field of semantic integration and this thesis proposes one solution for sharing data between independent Web widgets on a Web application. A solution of this problem proposed in the thesis is built on the OpenAjax Hub framework that provides the means for Web widgets to exchange messages between each other. OpenAjax Hub provides a central hub that allows messaging between widgets that connect to the hub and subscribe and publish related messages. The problem rises in the use of different data structures in messages exchanged by widgets developed by different vendors. Even though the widgets can use the hub for exchanging messages, the content of exchanged messages remains unknown for the widgets and they are not able to interpret the messages that are exchanged through the hub. The solution proposed and implemented in this thesis is a JavaScript application built as a Web widget that is connected to the OpenAjax messaging hub on a Web application to transform all the exchanged data to be interpretable to every widget in the application. The proposed widget is called Transformer Widget and it uses semantic integration to transform data. The Transformer Widget is connected to the hub as other widgets and, while staying invisible, it listens to all of the messages exchanged by other widgets. Using preconfigured mappings which help the Transformer Widget to identify data elements with their meanings in messages, it aggregates data elements to generate new messages that can be sent to widgets. Mappings describe the structure and the semantics of the messages that are being exchanged through the hub. Mappings contain descriptions of atomic data elements in the messages where each atomic data element is matched with a term in an ontology that describes the meaning of that particular data element. This allows automatic understanding of the content of the exchanged messages regardless of which data structures are used in the messages. It is then possible to collect atomic data elements from the received messages to generate new messages that can be sent to the widgets that could interpret those messages. This solution makes it possible to build complex Web applications (i.e. mashups) using independent Web components (e.g. widgets) that could collaborate and share data with each other

Contextual Semantic Integration For Ontologies

Information integration in organisations has been hindered by differences in the software applications used and by the structure and semantic differences of the different data sources (de Bruijn, 2003). This is a common problem in the area of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) where numerous ah-hoc programs have typically been created to perform the integration process. More recently ontologies have been introduced into this area as a possible solution to these problems, but most of the current approaches to ontology integration only address platform, syntactic and structural differences and do not address the semantic differences between the data sources (de Bruijn, 2003). For ontology semantic integration the underlying meaning of each element is needed. An approach based on introducing the contextualisation of the terms used in an ontology is proposed. This approach is called Contextual Semantic Integration for Ontologies

A Study on the Construction of Tourism E-commerce System Based on Semantic Web Services

This paper presents a novel method of constructing a tourism e-commerce platform based on semantic web services. In order to solve the puzzles of web services discovery, system adaptability, automatically assembling and calling caused by bad system semantic interoperability in tourism e-commerce based on traditional web services, we construct a novel tourism e-commerce system framework based on semantic web services, which uses semantic services layer to replace the representation layer in the traditional model. Experiment proves that the framework owns the superiority of platform irrelevance, system highly seamless integration, high semantic interoperability and intelligence, and can solve the low semantics in tourism e-business system well

Интеграция данных на основе технологий Semantic Web и Big Data

The possibility of using Hadoop Big Data platform for the implementation of a virtual system data integration based on Semantic Web technologies is described

Lost in translation: data integration tools meet the Semantic Web (experiences from the Ondex project)

More information is now being published in machine processable form on the web and, as de-facto distributed knowledge bases are materializing, partly encouraged by the vision of the Semantic Web, the focus is shifting from the publication of this information to its consumption. Platforms for data integration, visualization and analysis that are based on a graph representation of information appear first candidates to be consumers of web-based information that is readily expressible as graphs. The question is whether the adoption of these platforms to information available on the Semantic Web requires some adaptation of their data structures and semantics. Ondex is a network-based data integration, analysis and visualization platform which has been developed in a Life Sciences context. A number of features, including semantic annotation via ontologies and an attention to provenance and evidence, make this an ideal candidate to consume Semantic Web information, as well as a prototype for the application of network analysis tools in this context. By analyzing the Ondex data structure and its usage, we have found a set of discrepancies and errors arising from the semantic mismatch between a procedural approach to network analysis and the implications of a web-based representation of information. We report in the paper on the simple methodology that we have adopted to conduct such analysis, and on issues that we have found which may be relevant for a range of similar platformsComment: Presented at DEIT, Data Engineering and Internet Technology, 2011 IEEE: CFP1113L-CD

Ontology driven integration platform for clinical and translational research

Semantic Web technologies offer a promising framework for integration of disparate biomedical data. In this paper we present the semantic information integration platform under development at the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) as part of our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. We utilize the Semantic Web technologies not only for integrating, repurposing and classification of multi-source clinical data, but also to construct a distributed environment for information sharing, and collaboration online. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is used to modularize and distribute reusable services in a dynamic and distributed environment. Components of the semantic solution and its overall architecture are described

Distributed reasoning for content-aware services

Traditional services nowadays offer a strict interface to predefined functionality. Given the current atmosphere of data-integration and interface adaption according to the user's profile and context, there is a clear need for a well-structured and organized approach. Ontologies, as a semantic and first-order-logic founded mechanism, are being used in our research to facilitate such a meaningful integration. However, it is still necessary to develop distributed mechanisms for such integration. The research presented in this paper focuses on the one hand on the development of efficient partitioning and distribution algorithms and on the other hand on the implementation of a scalable service platform for distributed semantic agents

Live Social Semantics

Social interactions are one of the key factors to the success of conferences and similar community gatherings. This paper describes a novel application that integrates data from the semantic web, online social networks, and a real-world contact sensing platform. This application was successfully deployed at ESWC09, and actively used by 139 people. Personal profiles of the participants were automatically generated using several Web~2.0 systems and semantic academic data sources, and integrated in real-time with face-to-face contact networks derived from wearable sensors. Integration of all these heterogeneous data layers made it possible to offer various services to conference attendees to enhance their social experience such as visualisation of contact data, and a site to explore and connect with other participants. This paper describes the architecture of the application, the services we provided, and the results we achieved in this deployment