The Saguaro Digital The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Library for Natural Asset ManagementAsset Management

Dr. Sudha Ram

Advanced Database Research Group

Dept. of MIS

The University of Arizona

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Objective

To develop a comprehensive digital library system that facilitates interoperability among heterogeneous resources used in decision making, evaluation and assessment of natural assets used for biodiversity and sustainability

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Key Issues and Challenges Addressed

Interoperability Using Mediators Support for a “living” digital library

(Resource Harvesting) Address needs of a wide variety of

users using Intelligent Agents Provide Contextual Search

Mechanisms

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Architecture of theSaguaro Digital Library

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Components of theSaguaro Digital Library

User Interface Agent (UIA)– Acquires the user background and stores it in the user profile

database.– Assists the user in formulating queries (contextual search).– Bilingual interface (English and Spanish).

Broker Agent (BA)– Communicates with supply agents.– Contains high level knowledge of the types of resources available in

underlying distributed resources. Processing Agent (PA)

– Assists the user in running analytical models.– Visualizes the output and passes it back to the BA, which, then

converts it to the UIA. Supply Agent (SA)

– Stores information about each individual collection of resources.– Contains knowledge about how to access such resources.

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Components of theSaguaro Digital Library

Semantic Mediator (SM)– Resolves data- and schema-level conflicts.– Resolves taxonomic classification and information classification

problems.– Uses its conflict resolution ontology to resolve such conflicts.

Metadata repository (MR)– Stores semantic data models that describe concepts in terms that

users understand.– Contains description of geospatial resources (NBII Biological

Metadata Standard). Model and Tool Repository (MTR)

– Spatial processing tools and algorithms, Mathematical models, Statistical tools, Analytical models, Visualization tools.

Harvesting Agent (HA)– Uses harvesting rule base and harvester profile database to invoke

appropriate harvesting tool and to store providers’ profiles and their background, assisting users with contributions to the SDL.

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Harvesting Tools Repository (HTR)– Contains online web-based tools (resource collectors) to collect and

update resource items.– Uses quality control tools and integrity checkers to determine the

quality of the resource and its reliability submitted by the user.– Provides notifiers to inform the appropriate review team when a new

resource has been submitted. Users and Resource Suppliers

– K-12 students, college students, federal & state agencies, public and private organizations.

Distributed Resources– A large number and variety resources scattered across various

Arizona state agencies, federal agencies and university departments.

Components of theSaguaro Digital Library

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Partners State Agencies

– Arizona State Lands Department– Arizona State Cartographer’s Office– Arizona Geological Survey– Arizona Geographic Information

Council

Federal Agencies– Department of the Interior USGS

Biological Resources Division Sonoran Desert Field Station

– Federal Geographic Data Committee– Department of Defense– USDA with the U.S. Forest Service

and the ARS Bee Lab– Los Alamos National Laboratory– Department of Agriculture - Rocky

Mountain Research Station– National Park Service, Southern

Arizona Group and the Nature Conservancy

K-12 Schools– Lawrence Intermediate School

– Ft. Lowell Elementary School

University of Arizona Colleges– College of Engineering (Arizona Regional

Image Archive, Dept. of Hydrology and Water Resources)

– College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Dept. of Geography)

– College of Agriculture (Dept. of Arid Land Studies, School of Renewable Natural Resources)

– College of Arts and Sciences (Physics and Atmospheric Sciences)

– College of Business and Public Administration (MIS)

– University of Arizona Library

Industry– Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

– Raytheon STX

– Simons International Corp.

– Oracle Corp.

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Ongoing Projects USM* (Interoperability, Metadata, Ontology) Intelligent Agents for Image and Multimedia Data

Management SAGE: An Intelligent Agent Toolkit for

Discovering and Accessing Distributed Earth Observing Data

Data Management for Biodiversity and Conservation

National Biological Information Infrastructure Data Services

Dynamic Schema Evolution in Large Heterogeneous Database Environments

The Saguaro Digital Library for Natural Asset Management

Contributions

Support heterogeneous, federated collections of digital contents.

Facilitate evolution of digital collections.

Directly support the goals of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) by developing the capability to share data and resources.