SILKNOWViz: Spatio-temporal data ontology viewer

Interactive visualization of spatio-temporal data is a very active area that has experienced remarkable advances in the last decade. This is due to the emergence of fields of research such as big data and advances in hardware that allow better analysis of information. This article describes the methodology followed and the design of an open source tool, which in addition to interactively visualizing spatio-temporal data that are represented in an ontology, allows the definition of what to visualize and how to do it. The tool allows selecting, filtering and visualizing in a graphical way the entities of the ontology with spatiotemporal data, as well as the instances related to them. The graphical elements used to display the information are specified on the same ontology, extending the VISO graphic ontology, used for mapping concepts to graphic objects with RDFS/OWL Visualization Language (RVL). This extension contemplates the data visualization on rich real-time 3D environments, allowing different modes of visualization according to the level of detail of the scene, while also emphasizing the treatment of spatio-temporal data, very often used in cultural heritage models. This visualization tool involves simple visualization scenarios and high interaction environments that allow complex comparative analysis. It combines traditional solutions, like hypercube or time-animations with innovative data selection methods.Interactive visualization of spatio-temporal data is a very active area that has experienced remarkable advances in the last decade. This is due to the emergence of fields of research such as big data and advances in hardware that allow better analysis of information. This article describes the methodology followed and the design of an open source tool, which in addition to interactively visualizing spatio-temporal data that are represented in an ontology, allows the definition of what to visualize and how to do it. The tool allows selecting, filtering and visualizing in a graphical way the entities of the ontology with spatiotemporal data, as well as the instances related to them. The graphical elements used to display the information are specified on the same ontology, extending the VISO graphic ontology, used for mapping concepts to graphic objects with RDFS/OWL Visualization Language (RVL). This extension contemplates the data visualization on rich real-time 3D environments, allowing different modes of visualization according to the level of detail of the scene, while also emphasizing the treatment of spatio-temporal data, very often used in cultural heritage models. This visualization tool involves simple visualization scenarios and high interaction environments that allow complex comparative analysis. It combines traditional solutions, like hypercube or time-animations with innovative data selection methods

An ontology supported risk assessment approach for the intelligent configuration of supply networks

As progress towards globalisation continues, organisations seek ever better ways with which to configure and reconfigure their global production networks so as to better understand and be able to deal with risk. Such networks are complex arrangements of different organisations from potentially diverse and divergent domains and geographical locations. Moreover, greater focus is being put upon global production network systems and how these can be better coordinated, controlled and assessed for risk, so that they are flexible and competitive advantage can be gained from them within the market place. This paper puts forward a reference ontology to support risk assessment for product-service systems applied to the domain of global production networks. The aim behind this is to help accelerate the development of information systems by way of developing a common foundation to improve interoperability and the seamless exchange of information between systems and organisations. A formal common logic based approach has been used to develop the reference ontology, utilising end user information and knowledge from three separate industrial domains. Results are presented which illustrate the ability of the approach, together with areas for further work

Standardizing Agent Communication

An Agent Communication Language (ACL) is a collection of speech-act-like message types, with agreed-upon semantics, which facilitate the knowledge and information exchange between software agents

Assembly Features Utilization to Support Production System Adaptation

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a proposed methodology to extend the evolvable assembly system (EAS) paradigm for product design by utilizing assembly features in a product. In this paper, assembly features are used to bridge the gap between product design and assembly process by matching features of a part in an assembly to operations of a process in the EAS ontology. This can be achieved by defining and extracting a new set of assembly features called process features, which are features significant to specific and well-defined assembly operations. The extracted assembly features are represented in a proposed model based on product topology. A case-study example is conducted to illustrate the new methodology. A process-feature ontology is proposed as well in order to match the assembly requirements represented by process features with the available processes and skills in the EAS ontology so that adaptation of the production system can be achieved.QC 20141008</p

A pharyngeal jaw evolutionary innovation facilitated extinction in Lake Victoria cichlids

Evolutionary innovations, traits that give species access to previously unoccupied niches, may promote speciation and adaptive radiation. Here, we show that such innovations can also result in competitive inferiority and extinction. We present evidence that the modified pharyngeal jaws of cichlid fishes and several marine fish lineages, a classic example of evolutionary innovation, are not universally beneficial. A large-scale analysis of dietary evolution across marine fish lineages reveals that the innovation compromises access to energy-rich predator niches. We show that this competitive inferiority shaped the adaptive radiation of cichlids in Lake Tanganyika and played a pivotal and previously unrecognized role in the mass extinction of cichlid fishes in Lake Victoria after Nile perch invasion

Causation, politics and law: The English--and Scottish--asbestos saga

Efficient knowledge sharing and reuse—a pre-requisite for the realization of the Semantic Web vision—is currently impeded by the lack of standards for documenting and annotating ontologies with metadata information. We argue that the availability of metadata is a fundamental dimension of ontology reusability. Metadata information provides a basis for ontology developers to evaluate and adapt existing Semantic Web ontologies in new application settings, and fosters the development of support tools such as ontology repositories. However, in order for the metadata information to represent real added value to ontology users, it is equally important to achieve a common agreement on the terms used to describe ontologies, and to provide an appropriate technology infrastructure in form of tools being able to create, manage and distribute this information. In this paper we present DEMO, a framework for the development and deployment of ontology metadata. Besides OMV , the proposed core vocabulary for ontology metadata, the framework comprises an inventory of methods to collaboratively extend OMV in accordance to the requirements of an emerging community of industrial and academia users, and tools for metadata management