Towards Multi-use of ocean data on the semantic web

Barry Tao, Jon Campbell, Gwyn Griffiths

• Surely this is largely the preserve of data managers?

• By designing/building/operating a variety of platforms/instruments/sensors we are mainly data providers rather than users

• We have control over, and responsibility for how data are recorded, formatted

• BODC have already begun work in this area – our efforts will complement this

Why USL?

Example of traditional ocean data gathering – Pride of Bilbao Ferrybox

Aanderaa 3835optode

Seabird SBE-48Hull Temperature

Chelsea MiniPackTemperature,Conductivity,

Pressure,Fluorescence

ABB Flow meter

Guest sensors

Ferrybox

Logger/Controller

GPS ReceiverPosition, Time

5 minutespot values

toOrbcomm

30-sec spotvalues to

PassengerDisplay

CompactFlash cardDaily binary files for

each sensor

Produce concatenatedASCII file for each

sensor

Produce merged datafile for each “voyage”

Apply salinity, oxygencorrections from

calibration sample data

Processemails withPerl script

Web pages withMySQL database,ship position and

graphs Data archived byBODC together with

metadata text file

Metadatarecorded on log

sheets

Water samples for chemical analysis

Binary data files processedevery 2 weeks or so using anumber of custom programs

Sensors from different manufacturers need tailored

software interfaces

Data logged in special format

Custom software required for each

stage of processing

Metadata recorded by hand

Vision for the future

• The sensors themselves should be self-describing and able to provide a complete set of metadata on request

• The data structures should also be self-describing with machine readable headers defining the data types, formats and metadata

• By following internationally agreed standards data would be immediately accessible to other organizations around the world

• Time taken to interface new sensors and adapt software to handle new data types is greatly reduced

• Underpinning all this there has to be a set of agreed vocabularies and relationships

• In other words an ontology• Over to Barry…

Where to start?

The Art of Enriching Data

• Data Metadata Ontology/Semantic Web

… …

2008 17.40278244 3599.98 20.00 11.81 0 3464 64708 0 0 101.0625 0.02008 17.44444656 3599.87 20.56 12.25 0 3600 1004 0 0 101.0625 3599.92008 17.48611259 3599.98 21.31 12.81 0 3600 301 0 0 101.0605 3600.0

2008 17.52778053 3599.98 20.81 12.69 0 3600 7186 0 0 101.0605 3600.02008 17.56944656 3600.04 21.37 13.31 0 3463 12216 0 1 101.0586 3600.02008 17.61111259 3599.93 21.31 12.94 0 3600 65202 0 0 101.0586 3599.9

2008 17.65277863 3599.98 18.50 10.19 0 3600 64947 0 0 101.0586 3600.0

… …

all_PofB_2008.sts

Year Jtime, … gps-x, gps-y, …, measurements, …

Meta-data on data entries

Meta-data on data fileFilename: all_ProB_2008.stsFile location: \REMOTETEL\ascdata\Pride_of_Bilbao\concat

Parameters Recorded: Salinity, temperature, conductivitiesYear: 2008Location: Portsmouth, Bilbao

• a formal context

• shared and consistent conceptualisation

• facilitate flexible annotating and linking resources

• distributed contributions and reuse

• scalability

The Semantic Web• A Web of machine process-able meanings

– W3C (WWW Consortium)– Ontology (concepts and relations)– RDF (Resource Description Framework), URI (Universal Resource Identifier)– Open up data to the SW community

• Typical semantic web activities for knowledge management– Ontology engineering

• Knowledge acquisition• Shared conceptualisation – concepts and relations• OWL (Web ontology language)

– Semantic annotation • Enriching resources using ontology• Generating RDF

– Semantic processing• Query• Reasoning

Semantic Web example in RDF• Things to express

– JohnSmith        lastname        Smith– JohnSmith        sibling            KevinSmith

• RDF Graph

• Namespace and URI– <xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">– <xmlns:rdfs=http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>

<xmlns:family=http://www.example.org/ontology/family.owl>

• RDF Triples– <Subject Predicate Object >– http://www.example.org/people/JohnSmith          rdfs:label                 "John Smith"– http://www.example.org/people/JohnSmith        foaf:lastName          "Smith"– http://www.example.org/people/JohnSmith          family:sibling      http://www.example.com/people/KevinSmith– http://www.example.org/people/JohnSmith          family:age                42– http://www.example.com/people/KeviSmith                 rdfs:label                 "Kevin Smith"– http://www.example.com/people/KeviSmith                  family:age                35

• Query on the Semantic WebSELECT ?name ?ageWHERE (?x rdfs:label ?name)      (?x family:age ?age)    AND ?age < 40

– "Kevin Smith" 35

John Smith

Kevin Smithfamily:sibling

“Smith”foaf:lastname

Collaborative Ocean• Agile Knowledge Engineering

– Multiple domain experts (on sensor, platform, etc)– Distributed and asynchronised contributions– Experimental testbeds of semantic web applications for CO

• Collaborative protégé • Ontowiki

• Potential collaborators and related technologies– SeaDataNet (EU) - to construct a standardized system for managing the large and diverse data sets

collected by the oceanographic fleets and the new automatic observation systems – Marine Metadata Interoperability, MMI (US) – Encourage good good metadata practices in marine science – BODC (UK) – Data and metadata archive of marine measurement– SensorML – XML models for processes related to sensor and sensor measurement

• Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) in OGC

• Results– Methodology and framework– RDF knowledge repository– Possible Service Interface

• SOAP Web services (independent of operation system)• Reusable portlets

– Browser accessible Portal

• A tutorialhttp://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/bt/co.htm

CO in Protégé

Semantically annotated instances in RDF

… …

<rdf:RDF xmlns:co="http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean.owl#" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" xmlns="http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean_ins.rdf#" xmlns:protege="http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/protege#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" xml:base="http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean_ins.rdf"> <owl:Ontology rdf:about=""> <owl:imports rdf:resource="http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean.owl"/> </owl:Ontology> <co:ChemicalSensor rdf:ID="Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode"> <foaf:depiction rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >http://lh4.google.com/joncam.usl/R88SEn_OgTI/AAAAAAAAACc/5F_ng9iSMfc/IMG_7879.JPG</foaf:depiction> <co:serial_number rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >123456789</co:serial_number> <co:calibration_last_date rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date" >2007-03-08</co:calibration_last_date> <co:purchase_date rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date" >2007-03-08</co:purchase_date> </co:ChemicalSensor>

</rdf:RDF>

… …

In Triplesco_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode co:serial_number 123456789^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string

co_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode foaf:depiction http://lh4.google.com/joncam.usl/R88SEn_OgTI/AAAAAAAAACc/5F_ng9iS

Mfc/IMG_7879.J PG^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string

co_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode co:calibration_last_date 2007-03-08^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date

co_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode co:purchase_date 2007-03-08^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date

co_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode rdf:type co:ChemicalSensor

co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao co:length 176.8^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#float

co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao co:tonnage 0^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#int

co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao co:passenger_capacity 0^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#int

co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao foaf:depiction http://www.poferries.com/tourist/content/images/image_750_505_sa_4693

.jpg^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string

co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao rdf:type co:ShipOfOpptunity

http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/on

tology/collaberativeocean_ins.rdf

owl:imports http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean.owl

http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/on

tology/collaberativeocean_ins.rdf

rdf:type owl:Ontology

co_ins:Cruise_1 rdf:type co:Cruise

co_ins:Cruise_1 co:platform co_ins:Pride_of_Bilbao

co_ins:Cruise_1 rdfs:comment test^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string

co_ins:Cruise_1 co:sensor co_ins:Aanderaa_Oxygen_optode

co_ins:Cruise_1 co:aboutSea co_ins:Sea_2

co_ins:Cruise_1 co:startDate 2008-04-09^̂ http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date

co_ins:Sea_2 rdf:type co:Sea

PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>PREFIX co: <http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean.owl#>PREFIX co_ins: <http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean_ins.rdf#>

In Graph

Status• Collaborative ontology maturing

– Sensor, Platform, etc.– Testing semantic annotation for Collaborative Ocean

• Establish a ontological reference model

• Integration with other SW applications– Ontowiki

Protégé Ontowiki

Semantic Web

RDF Ontology

Semantic Web Applications… …

hardware datasets personnel operationsOceanography resources at NOC

Further Information• The ontology

http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/collaberativeocean.owl

• The semantic annotations (instances)http://wwwtest.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/ontology/

collaberativeocean_ins.rdf

• A tutorial

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/nmf/usl/bt/co.htm