design process of agriculture ontologies

PowerPoint

Hideaki Takeda

National Institute of Informatics (NII)

International Symposium on Designing Semantics15March, 2017, Kyoto, JapanDesign Process of Agriculture Ontologies

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Standardization of Agricultural ActivitiesBackground

Issues

Purpose

Agricultural IT systems are widely adopted to manage and record activities in the fields efficiently. Interoperability among these systems is needed to integrate and analyze such records to improve productivity of agriculture. To provide the standard vocabulary by defining the ontology for agricultural activityData in agricultural IT systems is not easy to federate and integrate due to the variety of the languages

It prevents federation and integration of these systems and their data.

http://www.toukei.maff.go.jp/dijest/kome/kome05/kome05.htmlPuddlingPulverizationPuddlingPuddlingPuddling Activity()Coarse puddingCoarse puddingLand gradingland leveling

Define activity concepts

Define hierarchy

Seeding: activity to sow seeds on fields for seed propagation.

Purpose: seed propagationPlace : fieldTarget : seedAct : sow

Seeding

Define activities with properties and their valuesThe hierarchy of activities is organized by propertyNew properties and their values are added purpose, act, target, place, means , equipment, season, and crop in order.Property values are specialized

SeedingpropertyvalueAgricultural Activity Ontology(AAO)

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Formalization by Description Logics

Crop production activityCrop growth activitypurposecrop productionpurposecrop growth

Agricultural activityActivity for control of propagationActivity for seed propagationpurposecontrol of propagationpurposeseed propagationSeedingact : sowtargetseedplacefieldActivity for seed propagationSeeding

Hierarchy by purpose

Designing of Agricultural Activity Ontology(AAO)

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Differentiate concepts by property

purpose : seed propagationplace : paddy fieldtarget : seedact : sowcroprice

purpose : seed propagation

purpose : seed propagationplace : fieldtarget : seedact : sowAgricultural activity >> Activity for seed propagation > Seedingpurpose : seed propagationplace : well-drained paddy fieldtarget : seedact : sowcroprice

Direct sowing of rice on well-drained paddy field Direct seeding in flooded paddy fieldWell-drained paddy field < fieldpaddy field < field


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Activity for seedingDirect seeding in flooded paddy fieldDirect sowing of rice on well-drained paddy fieldSeeding on nursery boxThe Structuralizaion of the Agricultural Activities (Protg)


Polysemic concepts[disjunction form][conjunction form]PudllingSubsoil breakingPulverizationLand preparationWater retentionActivity for water managementLand levelingPolysemic relationship

Pulverization by harrowpurpose : pulverizationpurpose : water retentionpurpose : land leveling

Definition of agriculture activities with multiple purposes or other properties.

Puddling


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Water retentionLand levelingPulverizationPuddlingPolysemic concepts (Protg)


SynonymDesigning of Agricultural Activity Ontology(AAO)

Expressions in multiple languages are also represented as synonyms. (It is important especially for non-English speaking countries)

Reasoning by Ontology

Reasoning by Agriculture Activity OntologyActivity for biotic controlActivity for suppression of pest animalsActivity for suppression of pest animals by physical meanscontrol of pest animalsPhysical meansmeans(0,1)

purpose(0,1)Biotic control

purpose(0,1)

Activity for suppression of pest animals by chemical means

Chemical meanspurpose(0,1)

means(0,1)Making scarecrowsuppression of pest animalsPurpose(0,1)build

act(0,1)scarecrow

target(0,1)

Physical means

Means (0,1)

Example ofMaking scarecrow?

suppression of pest animalsInfer the most feasible upper concept for the given constraints for a new words

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Reasoning by Ontologymeans(0,1)

means(0,1)

Inference with SWCLOS

[1] Seiji Koide, Theory and Implementation of Object Oriented Semantic Web Language, PhD Thesis, Graduate University for Advance Studies, 2011[1][1]Activity for biotic controlActivity for suppression of pest animalsActivity for suppression of pest animals by physical meanscontrol of pest animalsPhysical meansmeans(0,1)

purpose(0,1)Biotic control

purpose(0,1)suppression of pest animals

Activity for suppression of pest animals by chemical means

Chemical meanspurpose(0,1)

means(0,1)Making scarecrowmake

act(0,1)scarecrow

target(0,1)

Infer the most feasible upper concept for the given constraints for a new wordsReasoning by Agriculture Activity OntologyMaking scarecrow is a subclass of Activity for suppression of pest animals by physical means

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Applying Agricultural Activity Ontology URI

Give a unique URI for each concepthttp://cavoc.org/aao/ns/1/

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http://www.cavoc.org/http://www.cavoc.org/aao

Web Services based on Agriculture Activity OntologyVersion Historyver. 141: published on January 5, 2017. 410 words and concepts.ver 1.33: published on September 23, 2016. 374 words and concepts,ver 1.31 : published on April 22, 2016. 355 words collected, the concepts were classified with 8 attributes.ver 1.10 : published on February 12, 2016. 330 words collected, new words are collected.ver 1.00 : published on November 2, 2015. 301 words collected, defined with Description Logics, introduction of property.ver 0.94 : published on May 12, 2015. 185 words collected.

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Web Services based on Agriculture Activity OntologyData Sharing

The data of AAO can be downloaded in the RDF/Turtle formats from cavoc.org/aao/.

we provide a SPARQL endpoint for users to explore AAO data using SPARQL queries.[the SPARQL Endpoint of AAO][Download]

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Web Services based on Agriculture Activity OntologyConverting synonyms to core vocabulary

http://www.tanbo-kubota.co.jp/foods/watching/14_2.html

Puddling ActivitysowingAAOPuddlingSeeding

Converting

[system]APIPuddling Activity and sowing

[system]Puddlingand seeding

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How did we build Agriculture Activity Ontology?Share the experience of building ontologies

Design Process0th Step: Project Formation1st Step: Survey2nd Step: Analysis of Data3rd Step: Proposed Structure (1st)4th Step: Introduction of Descriptions Logics5th Step: Evaluation and Enrichment by domain experts

Design Process- 0th Step: Project Formation -Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), Technologies for creating next-generation agriculture, forestry and fisheries (funding agency: Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution, NARO).Project aim: define common vocabulary on agriculture activity To share knowledge among farmers of different crops and different regions and different systems Human understandable and machine readable

Four members from two organizationsOntology Expert Researchers from National Institute of Informatics (NII)

Information Expert Researchers from National Agriculture and Food Organization (NARO)

Design Process- 1st Step: Survey -Survey of existing vocabulariesAgrovoc: defined by FAO. Most popular and famous vocabulary in the domainInternationalMaintenanceMachine readable (LOD)AgropediaIn JapaneseWith explanationsMAFF Guideline (prototype version)OfficialRelated to Elements in Official Statistics

AGROVOCThesaurus

AGROVOC organizes words by synonym, narrower/broader, and related relationship. harvestingtopping(beets)balinggleaningmechanical harvestingmowing

AGROVOC. . .Narrower/broader relationship is not clearly defined. So relationship among bother words are often mixed and misunderstood.

relationship between siblingsAGROVOC is the most well-known vocabulary in agriculture supervised by Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) and the thesaurus containing more than 32,000 terms of agriculture, fisheries, food, environment and other related fields.The number of activity names about rice farming, which is important in Asia including Japan, are insufficient.

IT

Design Process- 2nd Step: Analysis of data

Design Process- 3rd Step: Proposed Structure (1st) -Define hierarchy clearly

Accept various synonymous words

Hierarchy is convenient for human to understand and for computers to process. But it often be confused by mixing different criteria on relationship among concepts/words. It causes difficulty when adding new concepts/words and when integrating different hierarchies.Names for a single concept may be multiple by region and by crop

Define relationship clearly between upper and lower concepts as basis of classification

Clarify an entry word and their synonyms for each concept harvestingtopping(beets)balinggleaningmechanical harvestingmowing

Thesaurus (AGROVOC). . .harvestingmechanical harvestingmanual harvesting

. . .Inherit

relationship between siblingsRepresentation: Harvesting

Design Process- 4th Step: Introduction of Description Logics -Consideration of the structureDiscovery of logical structureReformation of the structure by Description LogicsUse of a property for each is-a relationIntroduction of a new propertyIs-a hierarchy of a property valueRe-arrangement of classes

harvestingmechanical harvestingmanual harvesting

. . .HarvestHarvestHarvestInheritbyMachinemanuallyRepresentation: Harvesting[Act]Ontologyharvestingmechanical harvestingmanual harvesting

. . .Representation: Harvesting[Means][Means]

Design Process- 5th Step: Evaluation and Enrichment by domain experts -Ask evaluations to experts individual crops expertsFarmer management system developerFeedbackSome alternation of class structureMany new wordsCrop-specific wordsArea-specific words (dialect)

What weve learntSurvey and critics of existing vocabulariesUnderstanding of pros and consFix the targetData-driven approachAvoid too abstract discussionSmall group of knowledgeable persons of two sides (domain and informatics)Constructive discussionMake the core then extend itIntroduction of AI expertsIntroduction of more domain expertsCommunication is important

Crop Vocabulary (CVO)

Next target: Standardize crop names(jagaimo), (bareisho) poteto@en(daizu), (edamame), soy@enCrop ConceptCrop name SynonymJapanese common nameScientific nameEdible partMature/ImmatureOther propertiesPlanting method

Data-driven

Crop names foragricultural chemicalsGuideline name (2017)CVOGuideline name (2016)Crop statisticsHousehold budget surveyVegetable CodeMAFFEncourage varietiesFood classifi-cation

http://cavoc.org/Common Agricultural VOCabulary Agriculture Activity Ontology (AAO) ver 1.31http://cavoc.org/aao/ConclusionThere are no gold way to build ontologies. We adopt the bottom-up and minimum commitment approach. It requires time and effort. We believe that it is successful at least to build AAO.

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