Semantic Technologies at FAO

FAO

http://www.fao.org/aims/

Semantic Technologies at FAO

International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO)3 Aprile 2009, Torino

Margherita Sini

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Few words about myself

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Just a very rapid introduction• What?

– semantic, semantic web, semantic technologies– ontologies, Knowledge Organization Systems, – metadata

• Why?– interoperability, exchange, share– user orientation, precision and recall– multilinguality, cultural views, context

• Who?– everybody, all domains, all countries, all .org

• Which instruments?– experts, NLP, methodologies and techniques

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Outline• Semantic projects involving FAO

– AOS– IPFSAPH, FNA, CWR, Fisheries, Food & nutrition,

Geopolitical ontology, AGROVOC Concept Server– Thai Rice Onto, Agropedia Indica

• Methods and Methodologies– Ontology models (AGROVOC Concept Server, LIR, ...)– Methods

• What’s next– registries: concepts, relationships– guidelines– networked ontologies– ontology-based applications– collaborations

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Semantic projects involving FAO

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Why AOS

vessel? craft? boat?

bateaux?barco?

ship or

container

Terminology brokering

Semantic navigation,Clustering, Ranking, ...

Intelligent queryexpansion

InferencingReasoning

Machine learning

Interoperability

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• Built from AGROVOC • Domain concepts• Categories

AGROVOCConcept Server

Agricultural Ontology Service• An FAO initiative for

more coherence in Agricultural Information Systems

• Need of a semantic approach• AOS elements:

– AGROVOC Concept Server

– KOS registry

– Mapping registries

– Metadata standards

– Tools

– Publications (guidelines, ...)

Ontology registry

Sub-domainontologies

Metadataontologies

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IPFSAPH

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IPFSAPH

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The Ontology

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Creation of the core ontology

1600 concepts

Information Resources•Brainstorming•Codex Alimentarius•SPS Agreement Ontology

Ontology Editor(OI-Modeler)

subject specialists

Agrovoc

Food SafetyDocuments

GenericDocuments

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Concept Search

The same records will be retrieved regardless of the specific synonyms or singular/plural forms that the user uses to refer to a concept.

Related concepts

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Multilinguality

The system is also able to understand a concept even when different languages are used.

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Check spelling

Spelling errors are corrected: e.g. “desease” into “disease”

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Paraphrasing

“mad cow disease symptoms” or

“clinical signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy”

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give the same results, which are ranked.

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Semantic navigation of the bibliographical metadata (1)

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Semantic navigation of the bibliographical metadata (2)

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Semantic Navigation of Knowledge

parent concept(s)

children concept(s)

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FNA

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Creation of the core ontology

BIBLIOGRAPHICDATABASE

CORPORATEDOCUMENT

REPOSITORYDATABASE

MERGERECORDS

+TRANSFORM

TO RDFS

Ontology Editor(OI-Modeler) maintain

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Ontology Relationships

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The ontology concepts

• Publication

• Issue

• Work• Article

• Subject Term

• Category

• Author

• Region

• Language

• Year

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The ontology instances

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Features• Multilingual concept resolution

• Get suggestions for the navigation(e.g. synonyms)

• Guided query formulation

• Easy navigation of the objects by following the semantic links

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What is possible to do• Improve browsing:

– e.g. continent / regions / countries

– e.g. link Agris/Caris categories with keywords– concept identification through natural language processing:

spell checking, parsing (e.g. “Dietary guidelines for human nutrition” or “Anaemia in children”)

• Perform some inferencing:– get the authors associated with specific keywords or vice

versa (“what an author wrote about between two years”, “who wrote about famine in 1999”, etc.)

– get the co-authors

– show articles with the same set or related keywords

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RDFa

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CWR

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Hierarchy

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• Undertaken by FAO• Developed in harmony with CWR descriptor list• First version (English only) available by

December 2006• About 800 core terms + acronyms + spelling

variants;• Clearly definition of concepts (AGROVOC +

other sources); and• Relationships: hierarchical + causative

The project

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• Knowledge sharing and reuse is now the primary goal of research communities worldwide.

• An ontology defines a common vocabulary; its potential is enormous. For researchers, scientists, extension workers, decision- and policy-makers, who need to share information about a specialized domain an ontology allows for:

• sharing a common understanding of the structure of the information provided;

• formalizing and reusing the domain knowledge;• analyzing it; and• separating it from operational knowledge.

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More semantics

Term: wild plants

subclass of plants superclass of crop wild relatives

adapted by domestication benefits from resource conservation

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From unstructured data to formalized data

“Destruction of forests is leading to the loss of many populations of important wild relatives of fruit, nut and industrial crops such as mango and rubber.”

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CWR• Crop wild relatives ontology (CWR ontology)• The Ontology contains about 400 terms

– grouped into themes (different namespaces used)• OWL Full

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Properties (1/2)

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Properties (2/2)

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Overall Solution (1/2)

Value-added information

services

Shared layer of

interoperability

Distributed Datasets

dataset1

dataset2

Common exchange layer (Vocabularies,Ontologies, RDF/XML)

datasetn

Aggregated Database

View

Subject specific Portals

…

Information

System (n)

News feed

service…

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Overall Solution (2/2)

Data

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Fisheries

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• The initial goal Making information interchangeable between ASFA, FIGIS, OneFish and

AGROVOC

• The approach Creating an ontology, integrating or mapping the 3 different systems +

AGROVOC Linking of the Ontology through wrappers to the different Information

Systems

• Evolution: NeOn

Fisheries Ontologies

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Fisheries Ontologies (2/2)OneFish

FIGIS

AGROVOC

Aquaculture

BrackishwaterAquaculture

MarineAquaculture

AquacultureDevelopment

AquacultureFacilities

BROADERTERM

BROADERTERM

RELATEDTERM

RELATEDTERM

FreshwaterAquaculture

AquacultureEconomics

AquacultureEngineering

BROADERTERM

RELATEDTERM

RELATEDTERM

Aquaculture Resource

Water Area

land

strainsSpecieslife cycle

Farming system

management system

Production center

Spawning technique

Breeding technique

Hatchery technique

Expl. form

Regulation

Farming

technique

Environment

Institution

Health monitoring technique

diseases

suppliers

ASFA

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Features1. Form versus meaning:

a) Traditional Searchb) Concept Search

2. Implemented functionalities:a) synonym searchb) multilingual capabilityc) terminology brokeringd) disambiguatione) related conceptsf) query expansion

3. Basic natural language queries

4. Semantic navigation of bibliographical metadata

5. Semantic Navigation of Knowledgea) Alphabetic list ...b) Core Fishery

Concepts ...

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Ontology properties|Fishing Grounds@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Fishing Operations@ag||Sponges@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Sponge Fisheries@ag||Pearls@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Pearl Culture@ag||Pearls@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Pearl Fisheries@ag||Silk@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Sericulture@ag||Small Enterprises@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Artisanal Fisheries@ag||Dairy Farms@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Milk Production@ag||Fish Farms@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Aquaculture@ag||Fish Farms@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Fish Feeding@ag||Fish Farms@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Fisheries@ag||Natural Resources@ag| PARTICIPANT-IN |Resource Conservation@ag|

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Example• "tell me what vessels from a nearby country are

currently in the marine area 50N060W within Atlantic Ocean, provided that also some Thunnus alalunga stock can be fished by those vessels, through allowed techniques"

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Using multilingual lexicalizations ENGLISH

SPANISH

FRENCH

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Using hierarchically related concepts

hierarchically related concept

Polyvalent Trawlers

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Using non-hierarchically related concepts

non-hierarchically related concept

gears

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Help the user formulate queries

Original query: bateau de pêcheTo refine your query, click on the concepts you are interested in. They will appear to the left.

Search:

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Enhancement of terminologies

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Reconcile different vocabularies

“navire de pêche”, “fishing

vessel”, “embarcaciones

de pesca”

AGROVOC or ASFA or

other“fishing vessels,”

“fishing boat,”

AGROVOC: “fishing vessels”, “barco”, etc...ASFA: “fishing

vessels”

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Semantic Navigation of Knowledge: a) Thesaurus based

Highlighting the originator thesaurus. User can select a specific thesaurus to look for.

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Geopolitical ontology

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Geopolitical ontology• Incorporate geopolitical data

• Will serve as a bridge to allow communication between the various systems.

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PropertiesisValidFrom

hasOfficialName

hasCode

isSuccessorOf

hasBorderWith

dependsOn

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Nutrition Ontology

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Procedure

=CONCATENATE("<owl:Class rdf:ID=""",J2,"""><rdfs:subClassOf><owl:Class rdf:ID=""c_",B2,"""/></rdfs:subClassOf><rdfs:label xml:lang=""en""><![CDATA[",D2,"]]></rdfs:label><code><![CDATA[",J2,"]]></code><TAGNAME><![CDATA[",J2,"]]></TAGNAME>",S2, T2,"</owl:Class>")

<?xml version="1.0"?><rdf:RDF xmlns="http://www.fao.org/aos/infoods#" 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#" xmlns:daml="http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xml:base="http://www.fao.org/aos/infoods"> <owl:Ontology rdf:about=""> <owl:imports rdf:resource="http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/protege"/> <owl:versionInfo rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >Revision 4.0</owl:versionInfo> <protege:defaultLanguage rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >en</protege:defaultLanguage> <rdfs:comment rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS) was established in 1984 on the basis of the recommendations of an international group convened under the auspices of the United Nations University (UNU). Its goal was to .....</rdfs:comment> </owl:Ontology> <owl:Class rdf:ID="c_0413"> <code rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" >0413</code> <rdfs:subClassOf> <owl:Class rdf:ID="c_041"/> </rdfs:subClassOf> <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Vitamin D</rdfs:label> </owl:Class>

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AGROVOC

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TerminologyWorkbench

AGROVOCOWL

AOS Core: the Concept Server

Export

AGROVOCRDFS formats

(e.g. SKOS)and

TagTextISO2709

Other thesauriand

terminologies

integration

ABACA NT1 Food NT2 AppleANIMAL BT Organ NT ....

mapping

Other thesauri & terminologies

ABACA NT1 Food NT2 AppleANIMAL BT Organ NT ....

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Concept Server project• Refine semantics and enrich data pool and

lexicon

• Develop a workbench for terminology and ontology development and maintenance.

• Support information management specialists in the development, maintenance, and quality assurance of the AOS/CS

• Global knowledge vs local knowledge

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AGROVOC Concept Server• AGROVOC cleaning and refinement

CurrentAGROVOC

MySQL

ImprovedAGROVOC

MySQL

AGROVOC OWLRevision

andRefinement

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How to obtain more semantics

MAIZEUF corn NT flint maize NT popcorn NT sweet corn

MILKNT Milk Fat NT ColostrumNT Cow Milk

International Fund for Agricultural Development

UF IFAD

MAIZEsynonym cornsuperclass-of flint maize used-to-make popcorn hybridized-into sweet corn

MILKingredient Milk Fat

ingredient Colostrumsuperclass-of Cow Milk

International Fund for Agricultural Development

acronym IFAD

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Modelling– Conversion to UTF-8– Migration to MySQL (from SQL server)– Migration to PostgreSQL (from MySQL)– Incorporated AGRIS/CARIS classification scheme

(multilingual) and the mapping with AGROVOC keywords

– Modified structure to store multiple classification schemes

– Revised RDBMS scheme for ontology representation– Designed OWL models– Export to OWL format (v0.8a)– Export to SKOS format (v0.8a)

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Methods• Concepts from

descriptors• Synonym

<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="synonym">

• Acronyms <owl:AnnotationProperty rdf:about="http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/2005#acronym">

<owl:Class rdf:about=" http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/2005#c_3"> <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">ABA</rdfs:label> <rdfs:label xml:lang="fr">ABA</rdfs:label> <rdfs:label xml:lang="es">ABA</rdfs:label> <rdfs:label xml:lang="ar">Ø¢Ø¨Ø§</rdfs:label> <rdfs:label xml:lang="zh">è„±è½é…¸</rdfs:label>� <synonym xml:lang="en">[8565] Abscisic acid</synonym> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=" http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/2005#c_3397"/> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=" http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/2005#c_32543"/></owl:Class>

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SKOS• SKOS export from AGROVOC Concept Server

Workbench (WB)

• SKOS web services– SKOS-services for DSpace plug-in

• SKOS for mapping projects

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AGROVOC CSWorkbench

triple store

SKOS

export

maintain

WebServices

access

access response

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Ontology models (AGROVOC Concept Server, LIR, ...)

Concept

Relationshipsbetweenconcepts

Lexicalization/Term

String

Relationshipsbetweenstrings

Relationshipsbetweenterms

designated by

manifested asOther information:language/culture

subvocabulary/scopeaudiencetype, etc.

Note

annotation relationship

Relationship

RelationshipsbetweenRelationships

All terms are created as instances of the class o_terms. All at the same level. Only one language per term.

term level

string level

concept level

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Agropedia Indica

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References• http://www.slideshare.net/marghe_rita/1-pantnag

ar

• http://www.slideshare.net/marghe_rita/2-pantnagar-w-guidelines

• http://www.slideshare.net/marghe_rita/3-pantnagar-w-exercices

• http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/

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Thai Rice Ontology

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http://www.fao.org/aims/Plant ontology: Relationship typesTaxon <hasSuperclass> Taxon

Taxon <has GrowthType> GrowthType

Taxon <hasPropagationMethod> PropagationMethod

Taxon <occursIn> Environment

Taxon <hasPest> Taxon

Taxon <hasDisease> Disease

Disease <causedBy> Taxon

TaxonPart <isa> AnatomicalPart

TaxonPart <isa> AnatomicalTypeOfFruit

TaxonPart <partOf> Taxon

TaxonPart <usedAs> Use

TaxonPart <usedToMake> ProductType

Taxon <hasDescription> Text

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Thai plant ontology: ExampleMangifera indica Linn. <hasSuperclass> Mangifera

Mangifera indica Linn. <hasGrowthType> tree

Mangifera indica Linn. <hasPropagationMethod> seedling

Mangifera indica Linn <hasDescription> "leaves ...., flower ...... “

Mangifera indica Linn <occursIn> dry soil

Mangifera indica Linn. <hasPest> Scirtothrips dosalis Hood

Mangifera indica Linn <hasPest> Oidium mangiferae

OR, instead of the last statement or in addition to it

Mangifera indica Linn <hasDisease> Powdery Mildew

Powdery mildew <caused by> Oidium mangiferae

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Conclusions

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Ontology-based applications• Networked Ontologies

• Better exploitation of the potentiality at the application level: powerful IR

• No more words but URIs in IS

• Ontology Web services (OWS)

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Collaborations• With AOS partners• Within EU Projects

– NeOn

– SEMIC.EU

• With other initiatives– GFIS

– Ecoterm

• Mapping projects• GBIF Global Biodiversity Information Facility secretariat• JRC + BGS + Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze

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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

• SKOS and other knowledge representation standards play a key role

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Questions?

Thanks

Margherita Sini: [email protected] Keizer: [email protected]

Dagobert Soergel: [email protected] Kawtrakul: [email protected]

But Also: Gudrun Johannsen, Boris Lauser, Claudio Baldassarre, Gauri Salokhe, Marta Iglesias, Caterina Caracciolo, Sachit

Rajbhandari, Jeetendra Singh, Mary Redahan, Shrestha, Prashanta, Ton, Imm, Thanapth, Trakul, and many others...

Technology

Semantic Technologies at FAO