agricultural ontology service agstandards-aims

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© FAODr. Johannes Keizer, Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division

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Agricultural Ontology Service – AgStandards -AIMS

2000 – 2006 and the next steps

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7This presentation

1.Achievements and Impact2.AOS - 2001 and now3.Lessons learnt4.Partners and Resources5.AOS and the semantic Web6.Questions

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1. Achievements and Impact

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7Preparation and Experiments

2000• Brussels meeting and AGstandards (AgMES) initiative• First participation in DC2001• AGROVOC expert conference• Launch of the Agricultural Ontology Service2002• AOS Workshops • Work on “Ontology Prototypes”2003• Release of AgMES NameSpace as first AOS element• Metadata Elements for “Document Like Objects”• Fishery Ontology Project started2004• AGRIS Application Profile DliO released• Working Groups on AGROVOC structure

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7Preparing the Basics

2005• Intensive Discussions on AGROVOC OWL model• Implementation of AGRIS AP in various bibliographical databases • 4 new language versions of AGROVOC• Booming downloads of AGROVOC as a de facto Standard• AIMS website released• DC Keynote

2006• AGRIS repository in AGRIS AP XML published• AGROVOC OWL Model ready and coding of AGV-concept server

started• 800 K USD Grant from the EU for a system of fishery ontologies in

a 4 years project• Ontologies for geopolitical and organization Information started• ConceptPaper to transform the AGRIS repository in an Ontology• AIMS website attracts a lot of traffic (for many reasons)

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7Starting Large Scale Implementation

2007• All AGRIS centres use the Application Profile• Architecture Paper for Agricultural OA Services based on

common semantics (AGRIS AP)• GFIS adopts AGRIS AP and Events AP• AGROVOC in 16 languages available• Enormous Request for AGROVOC (ca 100 downloads/month)• Geopolitical Ontology released• First Set of Fishery Ontologies Released• Starting Contacts to Gene and Plant Ontology Initiatives• Draft for Application Profiles on Organizations, Events and

Projects available• Organization Registry project launched• AGRIFEEDS application released• DC Keynote• December release of AGROVOC concept server workbench• A Google Search on “Agricultural Ontology Service” yields

12700 references. They are all about us – and relevant

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2. AOS - 2001 and now

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7Two of our first explanations (from 2001)

AGROVOC

NAL Thesaurus

CABI Thesaurus

Dedicated KOSs

Non-dedicated KOSs

e.g., ASFA thesaurus

e.g., the Multilingual Forestry Thesaurus

e.g., the Sustainable Development

website classification

e.g., biological taxonomies such as NCBI and ITIS

GEMET

Other thematic thesauri

Existing Thesauri and Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs)

Common concepts are not declared

No or very limited interoperability

Insufficient subject + language coverage

Severe maintenance problems

Very limited machine readability

Only very simple encoding of semantic relations

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KOS uses components to build

an application

Discussions and choices for amendments to

components

Components: terms, definitions,

relationshipsUsers search and browse

application using components

User feedback

Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS)

Federated storage and description facility

Components: terms, definitions,

relationships

Two of our first explanations (from 2001)2

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7Changing Conceptions

•A slight bias was in the first diagram (UMLS)

•Basically right from the beginning (Community of Practice

•Slight rethinking and regrouping was necessary in the years

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7The AOS now

• The AGROVOC Concept Server• Subject Ontologies and specialized thesauri

• Crop Wild Relatives• Fishery: gears, vessels, water bodies, fishery commodities,

biological entities• Rice

• Application Profiles for Knowledge Objects• DliOs• Learning Resources• Organizations• Projects• News and Events• ........

• (Application Ontologies)• Food Nutrition and Agriculture Journal• Geopolitical Ontology• AGRIS• Alertsystem for Fishstock depletion

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• Internal coherence within the AOS

• Relationship between AGROVOC CS and specific Ontologies

• The URI problem• Feedback from Application

Ontologies

The AOS now – some Problems2

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3. Lessons Learned

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7... Do not give up early

• Internal Acceptance was Difficult Initially• Implementation of the AGRIS AP

……. many discussionsmain points:- too many elements- too complicated- but we did not surrender

• Debate around AGROVOC structure– SKOS discussions (Our model too complicated)– Some weeks ago Alistair Miles from W3 working group send out a

proposal for Label relations

• Some Failed projects are not really a problem– Antimicrobials Online, Swetfos, ecoterm, faster, ipfsaph,

progress

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7....Ontologies only on demand

• First AOS workshop decided about Ontology prototypes (Fishery, Food Safety...)– Fishery

a big conceptional work was undertaken without a real demand from an application. Result was a bulky construction with no real use case. This changed radical with the involvement of FIGIS in the NeOn project

– Food Safety Ontologya food safety ontology was created using AGROVOC, expert

knowledge and text mining, but then it became clear that i did not fit the needs of the application (IPFSAPH)

• This were useful experiences, but not the way to go for developing full fledged ontologies

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7.....killer applications needed

• standards have never been sexy - well, is there anything more boring than reading ISO specifications?

• people want applications, not standards• if we want to produce interoperability

standards, we have to marry application developers

• or develop our own applications• there is no automatism in the uptake of

standards

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4. Partners and Resources

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7Networking4

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7Approximative Investment into the AOS Project

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Donors

Partner

FAO

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5. AOS and the Semantic Web

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7©Berners-Lee

… everyone knows this

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7Rethinking the Semantic Web

• Some remarks from recent talks of TBL and Wendy Hall– A web of data– Channelling existing structured data into the semantic

web– Using existing large databases– Creating data exchange profiles

• This is the AOS project in our area

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7Our Vision

Shared layer of interoperability

Shared layer of interoperability

Value-addedInformation

Services

Value-addedInformation

Services

Aggregated

Database View

Aggregated

Database View

Subject-specific Portals

Subject-specific Portals

Open URL or OAI based

services

Open URL or OAI based

services

Information System

(n)

Information System

(n)

Web Services

Web Services

DistributedDatasets

DistributedDatasets

DatabaseDatabase

...Database

Database WebsitesWebsites

Metadata ontologies (Application Profiles)Subject ontologies

XML BusXML BusA

OS

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7 A Semantic WebSpace by a Community of Practice

• But Not a semantic web, but a semantic space in the web for communities:Network of Data and Service Providers with agreed procedures and standards – and common ontological layers

• Data Provider: exposes institutional open archives of data and information– Development Agencies and NGOs– Research Institutions– Industry Information Centres

• Service Provider: provides services based on these institutional open archives– Libraries and other traditional Aggregators– Thematic or Regional Centres of Excellence– The data providers themselves

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6. Questions

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7Fake Questions, which need always answers

• Is the investment in metadata, controlled vocabularies and Ontologies running behind the web development: – Social Bookmarking, Wikis, …

• Yes and No– Many applications (bibliographical metadata at example)

need a rethinking– But no Web20 application has resolved the questions of

coherence and machine readability posed by Tim Berners Lee (“The web is like a big relational database without relations”)

• Semantic Social Bookmarking– Web 20 application might be used to create semantic

knowledge structures

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7Real Questions to discuss at this workshop

• Priorities, • what do we need most, • what can we achieve in measurable time

• Impact• how to reach out more efficiently• killer application/s

• Community, • how can we improve collaboration,• how can we exploit synergies and comparative

advantages

• Sustainability, • how can we assure services for a long time range, • who will give us the money

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The Team at FAO:Johannes Keizer, Stefano Anibaldi, Andrew

Bagdanov, Caterina Caracciolo , Marta Iglesias, Gudrun Johannsen, Stefka Kaloyanova, Kim Soonho, Boris Lauser, Irene Onyancha, Stefano Pesci, Valeria Pesce, Gauri Salokhe, Margherita Sini, Imma Subirats , Virginie Viollier, Kris Jelinek, Maria Folch, Kirsten Geist

([email protected])

And the network of collaborators

Dagobert Soergel, Anita Liang, Chang Chun, Asanee Kawtrakul, Aree Thunkijjanukij, Wang Zhong, Ze Li, Jai Haravu, ARD Prasad, Jayanta Chatterjee, TVP Prabhakar and many others

Credits

agricultural ontology service agstandards-aims

Education