Developing an Ontology for Irrigation Information Resources *Cornejo, C., H.W. Beck, D.Z. Haman, F.S. Zazueta. University of Florida Gainesville, FL. USA

Content  Objective  ObjectEditor  Irrigation Ontology  Conclusions  Future Work

Overall Project Objectives  Production of Personalized Illustration-based Extension Manuals for Illiterate farmers in developing countries.  To develop culture specific (localized) educational materials.

ObjectEditor

 Is an ontology management system that includes a formally defined ontology language which also acts as a data modeling language for the database  This is a web-based tool that consists on a graphic interface to create the concepts and relationships that are part of a domain specific ontology.

ObjectEditor Provides:  Tools for inspecting and editing the ontology  Operations for manipulating the ontology (reasoners)  Secondary storage management to support efficient processing of these operations

ObjectEditor  Classes Subclasses  Instances  Relationship types: Generalization Part-of Sequence Association

Irrigation Ontology

Domain Ontology  Ontology is a structure to describe a domain’s concepts as well as multiple relationships among those concepts.  An ontology formally describes a domain; it provides a generic way to reuse and share content across applications and groups.

Ontology Development  Define the domain, objectives, and scope of the ontology  Enumerate important concepts within the ontology’s domain  Define concepts, and/or its properties  Define the hierarchy of the concepts  Define the relationships among the concepts

Irrigation Ontology Objectives  Create an irrigation ontology to support management and storage of information, and knowledge sharing for the development of educational resources for small farmers.

Irrigation Ontology Objectives  To develop an ontology that will collect and organize terminology and concepts related to the irrigation domain.  Allow information sharing and agreement on the terms used by experts in the field.

Irrigation Ontology  Domain: Irrigation concepts to develop educational materials for small farmers with low literacy level.  Define Main Topics: Discussion among experts  Hierarchy Mostly Top-down  Relationships

Sources of Information  Land and Water Development Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)  American Society of Agricultural Engineering (ASAE)  United States National Agricultural Library Thesaurus (NALT)  Extension Data Information Source (EDIS) and Experts from the University of Florida

Main Topics PlantIrrigationManagement Soil DrainageEquipment Water SourcesSystem DesignWeather

Irrigation Ontology Development Class Sub-class Association Sequence Generalization

Part-of relationship Pressurized Irrigation Lateral Manifold Distribution Equipment

Generalization relationship Micro-catchment Contour Farming Earth Basin Planting Pit Stone Lines BundRidge Triangular Semi-circular

Content  Different formats can be stored in the irrigation ontology: Text Numeric (equations) Graphics Audiovisual

Conclusions

 Ontology can represent irrigation knowledge and store concepts  The ObjectEditor based ontology can store information in multiple media like text, graphics, numerical, and mathematical equations.  The materials could be generated in different formats like PDF files for printing, or as html files for web pages.

PDF

Illustrations based materials

Conclusions  Allows more easy collaboration among specialist  Capability of reusing existing information  It would also allow the management of a larger amount of data  Improved searching capabilities compared to the actual browsers

Future Work

 Include Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) illustrations in ObjectEditor Merge ObjectEditor with GraphicsEditor  Create an interface for the final users (e.g., extension agents, educators)  Increase searching capabilities

GraphicsEditor  Add SVG capabilities to ObjectEditor: Localization Reusability Format independent

SVG illustrations  Localization: Inclusion of culture specific characteristics Increases understanding by users

Questions or Comments? Thank you!