1. 23.01.2006, 1/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO From Thesauri to the Agricultural Ontology Service: the FAO initiative 21st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006

2. 23.01.2006, 2/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

3. 23.01.2006, 3/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

4. 23.01.2006, 4/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

5. 23.01.2006, 5/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO Intelligent web applications (1/2) vessel bateau ship vessel navire barco

6. 23.01.2006, 6/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

7. 23.01.2006, 7/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO Basis of the AOS system (1/2) RDBMS AGROVOC RDFS formats (e.g. SKOS) Improved structure Improved structure

8. 23.01.2006, 8/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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 Improved structure

9. 23.01.2006, 9/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

10. 23.01.2006, 10/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

11. 23.01.2006, 11/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO AOS architecture elements: Core Elements Ontology Registry Sub-domain ontologies Metadata ontologies Built from AGROVOC Domain concepts Categories AGROVOC Concept Server Improved structure

12. 23.01.2006, 12/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO AOS architecture elements: Overall picture AOS/CS Workbench AGROVOC OWL export AGROVOC RDFS formats (e.g. SKOS) and TagText ISO2709 Other thesauri and terminologies integration ABACA NT1 Food NT2 Apple ANIMAL BT Organ NT.... mapping ABACA NT1 Food NT2 Apple ANIMAL BT Organ NT.... Other thesauri and terminologies

13. 23.01.2006, 13/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

14. 23.01.2006, 14/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO What more semantics means MAIZE UF corn NT flint maize NT popcorn NT sweet corn MILK NT Milk Fat NT Colostrum NT Cow Milk International Fund for Agricultural Development UF IFAD MAIZE synonym corn superclass-of flint maize used-to-make popcorn hybridized-into sweet corn MILK ingredient Milk Fat ingredient Colostrum superclass-of Cow Milk International Fund for Agricultural Development acronym IFAD

15. 23.01.2006, 15/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

16. 23.01.2006, 16/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO The AOS/CS-Workbench (2/2).doc,.pdf,.xml, etc. Concept Hierarchy input AOS/CS Workbench concordance pattern-matching multilingual text corpus input

17. 23.01.2006, 17/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

18. 23.01.2006, 18/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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)

19. 23.01.2006, 19/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 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

20. 23.01.2006, 20/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO Concluding... From here.... To here....

21. 23.01.2006, 21/21, © Library and Documentation Systems Division 21 st APAN Meeting Tokyo, 22-26 January 2006 AGROVOC and AOS, Margherita Sini, FAO Questions? margherita.sini@fao.org Thank you.