When Hydrospheres Collide Lessons in Practical Environmental Ontologies John Graybeal, Luis Bermudez Marine Metadata Interoperability Project 12 October 2006

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project MMI: Brief Introduction Started 2004 with NSF funding; recent 3-year NSF award Mission: Improve the use and understanding of metadata in marine sciences International participation and support Main deliverables: web site, tools, community –300-plus members –Numerous open-source tools like VINE, Voc2OWL –Collaborations with many in community Technical Lead: Luis Bermudez

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Vocabulary Integration Environment

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Background and Motivation Guide a marine data repository to tag data sets with the appropriate data source tag Help a data portal discover data through semantic inferencing Help an instrument manufacturer to categorize their instruments in a consistent and useful way Guide other domains to better categorized their data sources

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Background and Motivation MMI Workshop Advancing Domain Vocabularies Aug Sensor Group

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Plan A: A Sensors Ontology Follow-on to Advanced Domain Vocabulary workshop last year –Multiple science domains, plus “sensors” Workshop Sensors Team: 6-7 people –Started with GCMD, SWEET vocabularies –Formulated a technique-based hierarchy Ontology work was to continue that effort –Some of us were nervous about the work required to make a sensors ontology

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Plan B: A Platforms Ontology Good to gain experience with the process Of direct interest to several activities –SeaSearch: Roy Lowry –MBARI data systems: John Graybeal et al –Metadata interfaces: Bob Arko Easier problem on which to start –Fewer critical concepts for categorization –Fewer existing vocabularies –Fewer stakeholders Useful for sensor work later

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Ontology Context

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Tools and Resources Concept Schemes: SWEET, CDI Platform Codes, GCMD and Wordnet. Dictionaries: Wikipedia, Dictionary.org. Search Engine: Google, for individual marine science and technology sites. Tools: Protégé, SWOOP and Pellet. Collaboration: WebEx and telephone. Web Site:

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Principal Players Luis Bermudez, MMI/MBARI (Lead) Roy Lowry, BODC Rob Raskin, SWEET Robert Arko, LDEO John Graybeal, MMI/MBARI Michael Hughes, BODC Marilyn Drewry, UAH Kevin O’Neill, BODC Group Photo

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Principal Customers Portals that want to sort or classify data by platform types Programmers or Data Managers that want to tag their data sets with a sourceType Interoperable systems that want to mediate between two or more controlled vocabularies Operators, developers, manufacturers who describe their platforms in metadata records Operation managers who manipulate assets Funders who allocate money to/for assets

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project The “Simple” Part

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project What Are The “Rules”? Syntactic Goals –Short words or phrases –Consistent capitalization/punctuation Linguistic Goals –Maintain concept order (noun or modifiers first) –Avoid acronyms –At each level, divide concept space into non- overlapping concepts that fill the space Semantic Goals –Common terms (ideally the most common) –Unambiguous words in English & American –Match other vocabularies where possible

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Class Name Constructs –Adjectives-Noun placement order. In English adjective goes first. (ResearchVessel instead of VesselResearch.) Same pattern was applied in DOLCE, KOALA, PIZZA ontologies. –Prefer the common marine term over the logic term. (DriftingBuoy instead of UnmooredBuoy) –CamelCase preferred vs Hyphen and underscores. (ResearchVessel instead of Research_Vessel or Research-Vessel) (but: Nonautonomous) The Professor says…

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Little Surprises Everywhere

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Unexpected Meanings “AUVs * operate in the hydrosphere” –To me (and many), this is earthbound liquid water –AUVs can operate there, even in canals and ponds But to hydrologists everywhere, this includes water vapor –An airborne AUV is not a useful concept –But then, what to do with atmosphere and terrasphere? * AUV = autonomous underwater vehicle

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project No More Hydrosphere for Us! Hydrosphere

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project What Are The “Rules” (Part 2)? How do you organize the ontology? What’s the basis for the framework? –Deployment medium was a clear winner How do you choose between 2 equally valid alternatives? –“It depends on how you will use it.” –Helps little in a general purpose ontology –Try to keep model close to reality Trouble coming in the sensors work…?

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Organizational Basis

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Criteria to add a new term It is not already in the ontology. It can have a property that differentiates it from its siblings. (e.g. ship and boat. The dimension of a ship is bigger than a boat.) A super-class is promoted when similarities are found among concepts. (e.g. Both Buoy and Research Vessel hasEarthRealmBase water. A new class can be created called WaterBasedPlatform.) A term can be categorized under 2 or more categories (e.g., Amphibious Crawler). The Professor says…

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project The Results (Ta da!)

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project Future Work: Sensors! Sensor Metadata Interoperability Workshop October 19-20, 2006 Choosing Standards / Learning Standards

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project MMI: Observing Sources Work: Ontologies: Ontology Mailing List: | Thank you