RKBExplorer.com:A Knowledge Driven Infrastructure for Linked Data Providers

RKB Explorer is a Semantic Web application that is able to present unified views of a significant number of heterogeneous data sources. We have developed an underlying information infrastructure which is mediated by ontologies and consists of many independent triplestores. Our current dataset totals many tens of millions of triples each publicly available through both SPARQL endpoints and resolvable URIs. To realise this synergy of disparate information sources, we have deployed tools to identify co-referent URIs, and devised an architecture to allow the information to be represented and used. This paper provides a brief overview of the system including the underlying infrastructure, and a number of associated tools for both knowledge acquisition and publishing

The Use of Ontologies in Contextually Aware Environments

In this paper we outline work in progress related to the construction of contextually aware pervasive computing environments, through the use of semantic and knowledge technologies. Key to this activity is modelling both where and what a user is doing at any given time. We present a prototype application to illustrate this work and describe part of its implementation

The effects of public funding on farmers' attitudes to farm diversification

The overall aim of this research is to provide the UK Government with an evidence base from which it may be established whether there is a rationale for continuing Government intervention to encourage farm diversification, in particular through making capital grant funding available to farm diversification projects. The project's findings will inform the future role of government support, including whether other forms of support (advice, guidance and training) may be appropriate.Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Farm Management,

From Information to Sense-Making: Fetching and Querying Semantic Repositories

Information, its gathering, sharing, and storage, is growing at a very rapid rate. Information turned into knowledge leads to sense- making. Ontologies, and their representations in RDF, are increasingly being used to turn information into knowledge. This paper describes how to leverage the power of ontologies and semantic repositories to turn today’s glut of information into sense-making. This would enable better applications to be built making users’ lives easier and more effective

The ReSIST Resilience Knowledge Base

We describe a prototype knowledge base that uses semantic web technologies to provide a service for querying a large and expanding collection of public data about resilience, dependability and security. We report progress and identify opportunities to support resilience-explicit computing by developing metadata-based descriptions of resilience mechanisms that can be used to support design time and, potentially, run-time decision making

The Wider Social Impacts of Changes in the Structure of Agricultural Businesses

Agricultural restructuring is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, recent decades have seen substantial changes, not only to the number and types of farmers and farm businesses, but also to ownership structures and to the relationship between land holding and management control. The Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), together with the UK Countryside Agencies, has commissioned a body of research in recent years which, taken together, offer important insights into the nature, speed and extent of restructuring in the UK and of the potential for further, accelerated change in the years to come. From this body of work it is clear that a prolonged and difficult process of disengagement from agriculture as a mainstream income source is beginning to take place, with evidence of both adaptation and resistance to change by a land management community which is becoming increasingly diverse in its social composition and behaviour. The adjustment to farming practice, living standards and lifestyles which all of this implies is not without personal cost and, while claims of an agricultural crisis may be exaggerated, it is clear that large numbers of farmers are finding they have to make difficult adjustments against a shifting background of policy reform and market change. Moreover, given the traditional centrality of farmers in rural communities, both as employers and as participants in many of the key institutions of rural life, there may be wider social implications of agricultural restructuring which now deserve to be more closely investigated. What, for example is the nature, extent and wider significance of the personal costs and social implications of agricultural restructuring.Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,

URI Disambiguation in the Context of Linked Data

The Linked Data initiative has given rise to an increasing number of RDF datasets, many of which are freely accessible online. These resources often arise as a result of database exports; however sufficient consideration may not be given to the unseen implications caused when they are used in the wider context of the Semantic Web. This paper investigates two popular resources, DBLP and DBpedia, and discusses whether the issues regarding identity management and co-reference resolution have been suitably addressed. We find that a large percentage of authors in DBLP have been conflated, and that disambiguation pages have been incorrectly linked using owl:sameAs within DBpedia. Systems for dealing with these issues are presented, and directions are given for future research

Consuming multiple linked data sources: Challenges and Experiences

Linked Data has provided the means for a large number of considerable knowledge resources to be published and interlinked utilising Semantic Web technologies. However it remains difficult to make use of this ‘Web of Data’ fully, due to its inherently distributed and often inconsistent nature. In this paper we introduce core challenges faced when consuming multiple sources of Linked Data, focussing in particular on the problem of querying. We compare both URI resolution and federated query approaches, and outline the experiences gained in the development of an application which utilises a hybrid approach to consume Linked Data from the unbounded web

Human-swarm interaction via e-ink displays

This paper proposes the use of e-ink displays to enhance human-swarm interaction research, and presents example hardware for the e-puck robot. We outline potential applications, including the display of a robot's internal status, as well as the use of e-ink displays to create dynamic fiducial markers