Extending a geo-catalogue with matching capabilities

To achieve semantic interoperability, geo-spatial applications need to be equipped with tools able to understand user terminology that is typically different from the one enforced by standards. In this paper we summarize our experience in providing a semantic extension to the geo-catalogue of the Autonomous Province of Trento (PAT) in Italy. The semantic extension is based on the adoption of the S-Match semantic matching tool and on the use of a specifically designed faceted ontology codifying domain specific knowledge. We also briefly report our experience in the integration of the ontology with the geo-spatial ontology GeoWordNet

An experiment in managing language diversity across cultures

Developing ontologies from scratch appears to be very expensive in terms of cost and time required and often such efforts remain unfinished for decades. Ontology localization through translation seems to be a promising approach towards addressing this issue as it enables the greater reuse of the ontological (backbone) structure. However, during ontology localization, managing language diversity across cultures remains as a challenge that has to be taken into account and dealt with the right level of attention and expertise. In this paper, we report the result of our experiment, performed on approximately 1000 concepts taken from the space ontology originally developed in English, consisted in providing their translation into Mongolian

OntoKin: An Ontology for Chemical Kinetic Reaction Mechanisms.

An ontology for capturing both data and the semantics of chemical kinetic reaction mechanisms has been developed. Such mechanisms can be applied to simulate and understand the behavior of chemical processes, for example, the emission of pollutants from internal combustion engines. An ontology development methodology was used to produce the semantic model of the mechanisms, and a tool was developed to automate the assertion process. As part of the development methodology, the ontology is formally represented using a web ontology language (OWL), assessed by domain experts, and validated by applying a reasoning tool. The resulting ontology, termed OntoKin, has been used to represent example mechanisms from the literature. OntoKin and its instantiations are integrated to create a knowledge base (KB), which is deployed using the RDF4J triple store. The use of the OntoKin ontology and the KB is demonstrated for three use cases-querying across mechanisms, modeling atmospheric pollution dispersion, and as a mechanism browser tool. As part of the query use case, the OntoKin tools have been applied by a chemist to identify variations in the rate of a prompt NOx formation reaction in the combustion of ammonia as represented by four mechanisms in the literature

Ontology-based faceted semantic search with automatic sense disambiguation for bioenergy domain

WordNet is a lexicon widely known and used as an ontological resource hosting comparatively large collection of semantically interconnected words. Use of such resources produces meaningful results and improves users’ search experience through the increased precision and recall. This paper presents our facet-enabled WordNet powered semantic search work done in the context of the bioenergy domain. The main hurdle to achieving the expected result was sense disambiguation further complicated by the occasional fine-grained distinction of meanings of the terms in WordNet. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes a sense disambiguation methodology that uses bioenergy domain related ontologies (extracted from WordNet automatically), WordNet concept hierarchy and term sense rank

Model-based documentation

Knowledge acquisition is becoming an integral part of the manufacturing industries, which rely on domain experts in various phases of product life cycle including design, analysis, manufacturing, operation and maintenance. It has the potential to enable knowledge reuse, however, poorly managed knowledge can cause information loss and inefficiency. If technical documentation is managed well in the manufacturing industries, intended piece of knowledge can easily be located, used and reused for purpose and as a result, the corresponding industry can be benefited. Some examples of technical documentation are design specification, operating manual and maintenance manual. Model-based Documentation (MBD) is a documentation approach that uses model to provide structure to the data of the documents. MBD can be thought of as a way to better organize knowledge thereby knowledge identification and retrieval become easier, faster and efficient. In this paper, we propose MBD and its extension as a potential solution to overcome the issues involved in the typical technical documentation approaches

Open Government Data: Fostering Innovation

The provision of public information contributes to the enrichment and enhancement of the data produced by the government as part of its activities, and the transformation of heterogeneous data into information and knowledge. This process of opening changes the operational mode of public administrations, leveraging the data management, encouraging savings and especially in promoting the development of services in subsidiary and collaborative form between public and private entities. The demand for new services also promotes renewed entrepreneurship centred on responding to new social and territorial needs through new technologies. In this sense we speak of Open Data as an enabling infrastructure for the development of innovation and as an instrument to the development and diffusion of Innovation and Communications Technology (ICT) in the public system as well as creating space for innovation for businesses, particularly SMEs, based on the exploitation of information assets of the territory. The Open Data Trentino Project has initiated and fosters the process of opening of public information and develops as a natural consequence of this process of openness, the creation of innovative services for and with the citizens. In this paper we present how our project acts on long-chain, from raw data till reusable meaningful and scalable knowledge base that leads to the production of data reuse through the implementation of services that will enhance and transform the data into information capable of responding to specific questions efficiency and innovation

A Semantic-Aware Data Management System for Seismic Engineering Research Projects and Experiments

The invention of the Semantic Web and related technologies is fostering a computing paradigm that entails a shift from databases to Knowledge Bases (KBs). There the core is the ontology that plays a main role in enabling reasoning power that can make implicit facts explicit; in order to produce better results for users. In addition, KB-based systems provide mechanisms to manage information and semantics thereof, that can make systems semantically interoperable and as such can exchange and share data between them. In order to overcome the interoperability issues and to exploit the benefits offered by state of the art technologies, we moved to KB-based system. This paper presents the development of an earthquake engineering ontology with a focus on research project management and experiments. The developed ontology was validated by domain experts, published in RDF and integrated into WordNet. Data originating from scientific experiments such as cyclic and pseudo dynamic tests were also published in RDF. We exploited the power of Semantic Web technologies, namely Jena, Virtuoso and VirtGraph tools in order to publish, storage and manage RDF data, respectively. Finally, a system was developed with the full integration of ontology, experimental data and tools, to evaluate the effectiveness of the KB-based approach; it yielded favorable outcomes

Towards the Integration of Knowledge Organization Systems with the Linked Data Cloud

In representing the shared view of all the people involved, building a Knowledge Organization System (KOS) from scratch is extremely costly, and it is therefore fundamental to reuse existing resources. This can be done by progressively extending the KOS with knowledge coming from similar KOS and by promoting interoperability among them. The linked data initiative is indeed fostering people to share and integrate their datasets into a giant network of interconnected resources. This enables different applications to interoperate and share their data. However, the integration should take into account the purpose of the datasets and make explicit the semantics. In fact, the difference in the purpose is reflected in the difference in the semantics. With this paper we (a) highlight the potential problems that may arise by not taking into account purpose and semantics, (b) make clear how the difference in the purpose is reflected in totally different semantics and (c) provide an algorithm to translate from one semantic into another as a preliminary step towards the integration of ontologies designed for different purposes. This will allow reusing the ontologies even in contexts different from those in which they were designed

A semantic schema for GeoNames

As part of a broader strategy towards supporting semantic interoperability in geospatial applications, in this paper we present a semantic schema we designed for GeoNames and the qualitative improvements we obtained by enforcing it on the data

An experiment in managing language diversity across cultures

Developing ontologies from scratch appears to be very expensive in terms of cost and time required and often such efforts remain unfinished for decades. Ontology localization through translation seems to be a promising approach towards addressing this issue as it enables the greater reuse of the ontological (backbone) structure. However, managing language diversity across cultures remains as a challenge that has to be taken into account and dealt with the right level of attention and expertise. In this paper we report the result of our experiment, performed on approximately 1000 concepts taken from the space ontology originally developed in English, consisted in providing their translation into Mongolian