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

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

23.01.2006, 2/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 3/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Outline

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

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

23.01.2006, 4/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 5/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Intelligent web applications (1/2)

vessel bateau

shipvessel

navirebarco

23.01.2006, 6/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 7/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Basis of the AOS system (1/2)

RDBMSAGROVOC

RDFS formats(e.g. SKOS)

Improvedstructure

Improvedstructure

23.01.2006, 8/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Basis of the AOS system (2/2)

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

Ontology + OWL

Improvedstructure

23.01.2006, 9/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 10/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 11/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

AOS architecture elements:Core Elements

Ontology Registry

Sub-domainontologies

Metadataontologies

• Built from AGROVOC • Domain concepts• Categories

AGROVOCConcept Server

Improvedstructure

23.01.2006, 12/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 13/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Achieving our objectives

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

ontology development and maintenance

23.01.2006, 14/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 15/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 16/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

The AOS/CS-Workbench (2/2)

.doc, .pdf, .xml, etc.

Concept Hierarchy

inpu

t

AOS/CSWorkbenchconcordance pattern-matchingmultilingual

text corpus

input

23.01.2006, 17/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 18/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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)

23.01.2006, 19/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

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

23.01.2006, 20/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Concluding...

From here....

To here....

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

21st APAN MeetingTokyo, 22-26 January 2006

AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO

Questions?

margherita.sini@fao.org

Thank you.