23.01.2006, 1/21, © library and documentation systems division 21 st apan meeting tokyo, 22-26...

23.01.2006, 1/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

From Thesauri to the Agricultural Ontology Service:

the FAO initiative





The question 'How does a thing become conscious?‘

could be put more advantageously thus: 'How does a thing become pre-

conscious?'. And the answer would be:

'By coming into connexion with the verbal images that correspond to it.

--Freud




Outline

• AGROVOC today• Intelligent web applications• Basis and architecture elements of the

AOS system• Achieving our objectives / Project plans• Open issues




AGROVOC today Internationally used Multilingual Maintained as a relational database Distributed in several formats (RDBMS,

TagText, ISO2709, SKOS, OWL) Available through Web Services

Term-based Limited semantics




Intelligent web applications (1/2)

vessel bateau

shipvessel

navirebarco




Intelligent web applications (2/2)• Improved search

– Cross-language– Query expansion

• Federated search / Terminology brokering • Semantic navigation• Inferencing / Reasoning• Machine learning• Better results display

– Clustering– Ranking




Basis of the AOS system (1/2)

RDBMSAGROVOC

RDFS formats(e.g. SKOS)

Improvedstructure

Improvedstructure




Basis of the AOS system (2/2)

• Concept based• More semantics• “Language independent”• Possibility of interoperability with other KOS• Web enabled

Ontology + OWL

Improvedstructure




AOS architecture elements:What is an Ontology

Explicit representation of domain knowledge Concepts are uniquely defined Capability of performing reasoning or making

inferences Ontologies can be used

• by humans for knowledge sharing and• by software agents for knowledge processing




AOS architecture elements:What is OWL

• Representation format• Built in top of RDFS• Simple and complex semantics representation • Easily sharable across the Web• Ontology interoperability• Reasoning




AOS architecture elements:Core Elements

Ontology Registry

Sub-domainontologies

Metadataontologies

• Built from AGROVOC • Domain concepts• Categories

AGROVOCConcept Server

Improvedstructure




AOS architecture elements:Overall picture

AOS/CSWorkbench

AGROVOCOWL

export

AGROVOCRDFS formats(e.g. SKOS)

andTagTextISO2709

Other thesauriand

terminologies

integration

ABACA NT1 Food NT2 AppleANIMAL BT Organ NT ....

mappingABACA NT1 Food NT2 AppleANIMAL BT Organ NT ....

Other thesauriand

terminologies




Achieving our objectives

• Refine semantics and enrich lexicon• AOS/CS Workbench for terminology and

ontology development and maintenance




What more semantics meansMAIZE

UF corn NT flint maize NT popcorn NT sweet corn

MILKNT Milk Fat NT ColostrumNT Cow Milk

International Fund for Agricultural Development

UF IFAD

MAIZEsynonym cornsuperclass-of flint maize used-to-make popcorn hybridized-into sweet corn

MILKingredient Milk Fat ingredient Colostrumsuperclass-of Cow Milk

International Fund for Agricultural Development

acronym IFAD




The AOS/CS-Workbench (1/2)• Support and manage the multi-language

terminology (development, maintenance, and quality assurance)

• Features– Text processing– Corpus Creation– Corpus Analysis– Term/Relationship

Management– Quality Assurance– Versioning and

Deployment




The AOS/CS-Workbench (2/2)

.doc, .pdf, .xml, etc.

Concept Hierarchy

inpu

t

AOS/CSWorkbenchconcordance pattern-matchingmultilingual

text corpus

input




Project plans• Definition of the supporting format• Design of the new AGROVOC OWL structure• AGROVOC data cleaning and refinement• AGROVOC conversion to OWL: distinction

between terms and concepts whenever possible; AGROVOC-OWL version1 for tests; final OWL version soon;

• Design and implement the maintenance system




Open issues• Ontology lifecycle• Ontology mapping• Ontology merging• No more words but URIs in IS• Better exploitation of the potentiality at the

application level: powerful IR• AOS Workshops + training• Ontology Web services (OWS)




Take-home message• There are many uses for terminology + ontology

systems in food and agriculture, both for information access and information processing

• FAO has several projects using such systems• FAO is deploying the

Agricultural Ontology Server (AOS)as a global resource

• FAO is refining AGROVOC and other terminology + ontology systems and is building AOS/CS Workbench, a tool to support this effort




Concluding...

From here....

To here....




Questions?

[email protected]

Thank you.

23.01.2006, 1/21, © library and documentation systems division 21 st apan meeting tokyo, 22-26...

Documents