1. 1 Development of a Community Ontology for Earth System Science Rob Raskin NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA March 20, 2008

2. 2 Data to Knowledge Data InformationKnowledge Basic ElementsBytes NumbersModelsFacts ServicesSave Visualize Infer Understand Predict StorageFile Database GISOntology Mind VolumeHighLow DensityLowHigh SyntaxSemantics

3. 3 What is Knowledge? Facts, relations, meanings, contexts, common sense Information with context Shared understanding of meaning Suitable for reasoning/inference Dynamic, expandable

4. 4 Application: Intelligent Search for Data Consults knowledge base to find alternative meanings Clustered by: synonyms, parent, children Enables discovery of resources without exact keyword match Semantic understanding is crucial Common search engines (Google) use these capabilities only minimally, at present

5. 5 Application: Intelligent Search for Data (cont.) Noesis ontology-aided search tool http://noesis.itsc.uah.edu Provides access to: Data Journal articles Web pages Experts (people)

6. 6 Ontology Method to store facts General definition: all that is known Computer science definition: Machine-readable definition of terms and how they relate to one another As with a dictionary, terms are defined in terms of other terms Provide shared understanding of concepts Support knowledge reuse Support machine-to-machine communications with deeper semantics than controlled vocabulary

7. 7 Desirable Features of OWL OWL accepted as a standard by W3C As a standard language, it is easy to extend (specialize) concepts developed by others Synonym support (multiple terms with same meaning) Label available to indicate preferred term for each community Homonym support (multiple meanings of same term) Separate namespaces ( President:Bush vs Plant:Bush)

8. 8 Plate tectonics - before Plate Tectonics Ontology

9. 9 Atmosphere Ontology… Atmosphere Ontology

10. 10 Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) Concept space written in OWL Initial focus to assist search for data resources Funded by NASA Later focus to serve as community standard Enables scalable classification of Earth system science concepts

11. 11 Non-Living Substances Living Substances Physical Processes Earth Realm Physical Properties Time Natural Phenomena Human Activities Integrative Ontologies Space Data Faceted Ontologies Units Numerics SWEET 1.0 Ontologies

12. 12 SWEET 2.0 Ontologies: Modular Design MathematicsUnits Electric/ Magnetism TimeSpace Radiation Transfer Geophys Fluid Dynam Human Activities Climate Change Troposphere Thermo Land Surface Waves HeliosphereCryosphere Mechanics Basic Science/ Math Supporting Geophysical Phenomena Planetary Realms Applications Air Pollution Water Resources Geosphere Ecosphere Biogeo- chemistry Planetary Structures import Ocean Upper Atmosphere Geo- magnetism Planetary Gravity Biogeochem Cycles Energy etc. Chemistry

13. 13 SWEET Numerical Ontologies Intervals, numeric relations ( ) Cartesian products Functions, derivatives Fuzzy concepts near Spatial concepts 0-D, 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D objects Coordinate systems Above, inside, etc. Temporal concepts Instant, durations, geological time scales

14. 14 SWEET Data Ontology Dataset characteristics Format, data model, dimensions, … Provenance Source, processing history, … Parameters Scale factors, offsets, … Data services Subsetting, reprojection, … Quality measures Special values Missing, land, sea, ice,...

15. 15 Expressing More Complex Relations in OWL Many relations are quadruples, not triples (Temperature hasValue 30 C) (JohnSmith hasExpertise Geology Expert) Nested Solution (Temperature hasValue (30 C)) (JohnSmith (hasGeology Expertise) Expert)

16. 16 Best Practices Keep ontologies small, modular Be careful that Owl:Import imports everything Use higher level ontologies where possible Identify hierarchy of concept spaces Model schemas Try to keep dependencies unidirectional Gain community buy-in Involve respected leaders

17. 17 PlanetOnt.org

18. 18 SWEET Future Community Plans Gain further support from Earth system science community Workshop at Summer 08 Meeting of eSIP Federation Submit SWEET as community standard to NASA Earth Science Standards and Processes Working Group

19. 19 Technology Geospatial semantic services established Geospatial semantic services proliferate Scientific semantic assisted services SWEET 3.0 with semantic callable interfaces via standard programming languages SWEET core 2.0 based on best practices decided from community Scientific reasoning Reasoners able to utilize SWEET 4.0 Local processing + data exchange Basic data tailoring services (data as service), verification/ validation Interoperable geospatial services (analysis as service), explanation Common vocabulary based product search and access Interoperable Information Infrastructure Assisted Discovery & Mediation Metadata-driven data fusion (semantic service chaining), trust Semantic agent-based integration Semantic agent-based searches Geospatial reasoning, OWL- Time Capability Results Improved Information Sharing Increased Collaboration & Interdisciplinary Science Acceleration of Knowledge Production Revolutionizing how science is done RDF, OWL, OWL-S Semantic Web Roadmap Current Near Term Mid Term Long Term Autonomous inference of science results Numerical reasoning Semantic geospatial search & inference, access SWEET core 1.0 based on GCMD/CF Vocabulary Languages / Reasoning Output Outcome

20. 20 Resources SWEET http://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov Ontology development/sharing site http://PlanetOnt.org Noesis (search tool) http://noesis.itsc.uah.edu SESDI http://sesdi.hao.ucar.edu