Uso de RDF y bases de datos de metadatos nativas dentro del proyecto Omnipaper

Este artículo describe el trabajo realizado para la creación de un prototipo para la búsqueda de información en archivos digitales distribuidos utilizando la tecnología RDF y una base de datos nativa. El articulo reseña los prerrequisitos para la descripción y normalización de la información de los archivos distribuidos, luego los criterios para la selección de la base de datos nativa, muestra las funcionalidades del prototipo creado y al final tiene una síntesis de las lecciones aprendidas y el trabajo futuro.Comissão Europeia - IST (OmniPaper - Smart Access to European Newspapers

Application of a context model in context-aware mobile government services

Dissertação de Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoAs novas tecnologias móveis oferecem um elevado potencial para a interacção e a participação dos cidadãos com as autoridades locais. Estas tecnologias são exploradas nesta dissertação, tendo como objectivo promover e melhorar esta interacção, suportando e criando formas novas de comunicação e tentando tomar vantagem da mobilidade tanto quanto possível. As aplicações baseadas no contexto utilizam o contexto para facilitar e melhorar a experiência do utilizador Estas aplicações, combinadas com as novas tecnologias móveis, podem simplificar os processos de comunicação com o governo. Esta dissertação apresenta as áreas chaves a considerar no desenvolvimento de uma aplicação móvel baseada no contexto. Inicialmente são apresentados os principais requisitos identificados para tais aplicações. Contexto é descrito então como um modelo do ambiente circunvizinho, e um modelo de objectos é apresentado a fim de demonstrar esta visão. Para a implementação do modelo de objectos foi utilizado RDF, que permite a representação de conhecimento. Um conjunto de aplicações centrais foi desenvolvido a fim de suportar o modelo de contexto e a criação de aplicações baseados no contexto. As aplicações foram testadas no município de Vila Nova de Cerveira, com a contribuição de um conjunto de cidadãos. Por último, os cenários de teste, assim como os resultados de usabilidade são apresentados.New mobile technologies offer a wide potential for interaction and participation between citizens and local authorities. These technologies are explored and exploited in this thesis with the aim of promoting and improving this interaction by supporting and creating novel ways of communication and taking as much advantage of mobility as much as possible. Context Aware Applications utilise context to facilitate and improve the user experience. These applications, combined with the new mobile technologies used by citizens, can simplify their process of communication with government bodies. This dissertation presents the key areas for consideration in developing a Context Aware Mobile Government Application. Initially we present the central requirements we identified for such applications. Our understanding of context is then described as a model of the surrounding environment, and an object model in particular is presented in order to realize this understanding. The object model was implemented using RDF, which allows the representation of knowledge, and a set of core applications were developed in order to support the context model and the creation of new context aware applications. These were tested in a trial implementation at the municipality of Vila Nova de Cerveira, which we present along with some user studies that we conducted with the help of some citizens of the municipality

Implementation of metadata for OmniPaper RDF prototype

Information Society Technologies (IST) funded OmniPaper project investigates efficient ways for access to distributed and heterogeneous digital news archives using state-of-the-art technologies such as RDF, XTM and SOAP. An approach taken is to create small prototypes based on each of them. This paper presents the first stage of the prototype development, particularly of RDF approach, including analysis on existing news text format standards and metadata vocabularies, definition of metadata elements for OmniPaper, implementation of application profile and RDF schema and development of the RDF prototype in a web-based RDF specific application. The elaborated analysis shows that Dublin Core Metadata Element Set has to be a principal vocabulary to implement the OmniPaper application profile as it provides greater interoperability. The RDF prototype provides RDF “metadatabase” with searchable interface for simple and advance search on the defined metadata elements

On the development of an open platform for m-government services

Citizens and local government services are often not as well connected as they ideally should be. Services may not be well advertised or may simply be cumbersome or time-consuming to access. In this paper we present our ongoing work in investigating how to better connect the citizen with their local government with the support of context-aware applications. We describe a set of user requirements for m-government services and open service-oriented platforms. In particular, we analyze the requirements and present the research issues on a context modeling component for supporting context-aware service discovery. Our motivation to develop it is driven by the need to provide appropriate local government services in an easily accessible manner whenever and wherever they may be neededIST project USE-ME.GOV (IST-2002-002294)