End Semantic Knowledge Platform for Resource Discovery in Biomedical Research

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

End Semantic Knowledge Platform for Resource Discovery in Biomedical Research RESEARCHIQ: AN END-TO-END SEMANTIC KNOWLEDGE PLATFORM FOR RESOURCE DISCOVERY IN BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH Thesis Presented in Partial FulFillments oF the Requirements For the Degree Master oF Science in the Graduate School oF The Ohio State University By Satyajeet Raje Graduate Program in Computer Science and Engineering The Ohio State University 2012 Thesis Committee Dr. Jayashree Ramanathan, Advisor Dr. Rajiv Ramnath Copyright by Satyajeet Raje 2012 2 ABSTRACT There is a tremendous change in the amount of electronic data available to us and the manner in which we use it. With the on going “Big Data” movement we are facing the challenge of data “volume, variety and velocity.” The linked data movement and semantic web technologies try to address the issue of data variety. The current demand for advanced data analytics and services have triggered the shift from data services to knowledge services and delivery platforms. Semantics plays a major role in providing richer and more comprehensive knowledge services. We need a stable, sustainable, scalable and verifiable framework for knowledge-based semantic services. We also need a way to validate the “semantic” nature of such services using this framework. Just having a framework is not enough. The usability of this framework should be tested with a good example of a semantic service as a case study in a key research domain. The thesis addresses two research problems. Problem 1: A generalized framework for the development of end-to-end semantic services needs to be established. The thesis proposes such a framework that provides architecture for developing end–to– end semantic services and metrics for measuring its semantic nature. ii Problem 2: To implement a robust knowledge based service using the architecture proposed by the semantic service framework and its semantic nature can be validated using the proposed framework. ResearchIQ, a semantic search portal for resource discovery in the biomedical research domain, has been implemented. It is intended to serve as the required case study for testing the framework. The architecture of the system follows the design principles of the proposed framework. The ResearchIQ system is truly semantic from end-to-end. The baseline evaluation metrics of the said framework are used to prove this claim. Several key data sources have been integrated in the first version of the ResearchIQ system. It serves as a framework for semantic data integration in the biomedical domain. It can be used as a platform for development and support of a variety of semantic services and applications in the biomedical domain. A large part of this thesis is devoted to the details regarding the ResearchIQ project. The document is intended as a report of the ResearchIQ project as a successful implementation of an end-to-end semantic framework. iii DEDICATION To my parents, Sanjeev and Swati Raje, and my sister Surabhi for their constant belief in my ability to achieve any goal set and for teaching me to believe in myself. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A special thank you to my advisors, Dr. Jayashree Ramanathan, Dr. Rajiv Ramnath and Dr. Philip Payne for their guidance throughout this project and my graduate studies. I have benefited greatly from your continual support and direction. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Tara Payne, Omkar Lele and the rest of the ResearchIQ team; Puneet Mathur, Sandeep Chatra Raveesh and Dr. Po-Yin Yen, without whose contribution this work would not have been possible. Likewise, I thank CETI and my colleagues at the CSE Department. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you and shall continue to do so. Finally, I would like to thank my roommates Shrikant, Pranav and Akshay and friends in Columbus who have been my family away from home. I gratefully acknowledge that the work done under ResearchIQ project is supported in part by an Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award, NIH/NCRR Grant Number UL1-RR025755. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vi List of Figures x List of Tables xii CHAPTER 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1. Background 1 2. Desiderata for semantic services 2 3. Problem Analysis 3 Need of a Semantic Search Portal for Biomedical Research 4 4. Contributions 6 vi CHAPTER 2 7 RELATED WORK 7 1. Linked Data 7 2. Introduction to Semantic Web 13 3. Semantic Web (Web 3.0) technologies 17 CHAPTER 3 22 THE SEMANTIC SERVICES FRAMEWORK 22 1. Semantic Web Applications 22 2. The Proposed Framework 27 3. Semantic Web Services Evaluation 31 vii CHAPTER 4 36 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCHIQ 36 1. Goals of ResearchIQ 36 1. Challenges 37 2. Contributions within ResearchIQ 40 CHAPTER 5 47 METHODS AND IMPLEMENTATION 47 1. The Basics 47 2. Implementation 50 3. Component Diagram 54 viii CHAPTER 6 56 ANNOTATION 56 1. Annotation Pipeline 56 2. Annotations 60 CHAPTER 7 64 QUERYING 64 1. Querying for Direct Resources 64 2. Querying for concepts 65 CHAPTER 8 72 CONCLUSION 72 1. Discussion 72 2. Final Comments 76 REFERENCES 78 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Semantic Services in the New Era 3 Figure 2: Size of the Web. (Source: netcraft.com) 8 Figure 5: Comparison Between Traditional (Web 2.0) and Semantic Web 14 Figure 6: Semantic Web Services and Intelligent Business 15 Figure 7: Semantic Web Stack [28] 17 Figure 8: Example RDF Graph 19 Figure 9: Gene Ontology (Source: Nature.com) 23 Figure 10(a): Visualization of the Google Knowledge Graph (Source: cnet.com). 9(b): An example search for "Barack Obama" showing the different semantic types of results (Source: Google.com). 25 Figure 11: Ontology for role-based access control in MetaDB [46] 26 Figure 12: Evolution of semantic web services [48] 27 Figure 13: Proposed semantic services framework 28 Figure 14: Transforming data for meaningful use using semantics 31 Figure 15: Evaluating Semantic ETL 32 Figure 16: Evaluating semantic services 33 Figure 17: Evaluating ResearchIQ semantic search 44 Figure 18: ResearchIQ utilizes ontological data structure 46 Figure 19: ResearchIQ Ontology Hierarchy 49 x Figure 20: ResearchIQ Semantic Web Stack 52 Figure 21 (a): Home Page with Auto complete list. 53 (b): Search Results for “Mass Spec” 53 Figure 22: Component Diagram 55 Figure 23: Annotation Pipeline 57 Figure 24: Annotation Process 58 Figure 25: Knowledge Graph 59 Figure 26: Example PubMed Resource 62 Figure 27: Query Pipeline 67 Figure 28: Propagation in the Knowledge Graph 68 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: 5 star rating for data as suggested in the linked data movement 10 xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. BACKGROUND In the past decade, there has been progress in the field of electronic data accrual and its dissemination [1]. Data in its electronic form is no longer restricted to few critical domains. It has pervaded through, and in most cases has become a requirement in a variety of commercial and social applications. Consequently there has been a shift in the way we perceive digital data from its initial use case as just a persistent form of storage that can help increase access and longevity of data to valuable pieces of information from which knowledge can be drawn. The push was to identify and leverage secondary uses of data to extract wisdom out of it. Researchers and industry experts realized the value of data and a vigorous race to collect data began. This race evolved into the “Big Data” challenge that we face now [2]. With the vast amounts of data from a variety of sources, which might not be connected explicitly, it has become necessary to have smart knowledge-based services that can perform intelligent tasks on such data. Semantic services [3] are viewed as a promising solution that can answer to this need. Hence, there has been a lot of research around development of such services. These services offer to add contextual and meta-information to provide better semantics which 1 can be utilized while performing the services. Few of the key requirements of a good semantic service are identified in the section below. 2. DESIDERATA FOR SEMANTIC SERVICES The desired features of a semantic service are derived from the demands of key data related issues as perceived today [4]. Figure 1 shows a mash-up of these requirements and the environments that they hail from. ABILITY TO HANDLE DATA The semantic services should by default be able to handle data heterogeneity. In addition it is desirable that any sematic service should be able to process large volumes of data and be able to process it in a reasonable amount of time. UTILIZE SEMANTIC WEB TECHNOLOGIES EFFICIENTLY The semantic services rely on semantic web technologies for their functioning. A smart semantic service should maximize the utilization of standard technological frameworks and methods of handling data. This will make the service extensible and reusable. SUPPORT A VARIETY OF SERVICES A single service framework should be designed such that it provides an infrastructure for a variety of data and knowledge-based services. These would include information retrieval, visualization, data integration and such other services. 2 PROVIDE SOLID INTERFACE TO THE USERS A semantic service is ineffective if it cannot be used efficiently for its intended purposes. The service interface is required to be functional, usable and testable. Figure 1: Semantic Services in the New Era 3. PROBLEM ANALYSIS NEED FOR A GENERALIZED FRAMEWORK FOR SEMANTIC SERVICES The number of semantic web services is increasing progressively and well- defined representational architectures are established. However, many of these are domain specific or specific to the service delivered. For instance, a semantic services framework for the healthcare domain is proposed by Niland et. al. [5]. The Ding et. al. [6] and [7] provide frameworks that are suitable for information 3 retrieval as a semantic service.
Recommended publications
  • A Tool for Identifying Attribute Correspondences in Heterogeneous Databases Using Neural Networks Q
    Data & Knowledge Engineering 33 (2000) 49±84 www.elsevier.com/locate/datak SEMINT: A tool for identifying attribute correspondences in heterogeneous databases using neural networks q Wen-Syan Li a,*,1, Chris Clifton b,2 a C&C Research Laboratories, NEC USA, Inc., 110 Rio Robles, MS SJ100 San, Jose, CA 95134, USA b The MITRE Corporation, M/S K308, 202 Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730-1420, USA Received 23 February 1999; received in revised form 23 September 1999; accepted 11 November 1999 Abstract One step in interoperating among heterogeneous databases is semantic integration: Identifying relationships between attributes or classes in dierent database schemas. SEMantic INTegrator (SEMINT) is a tool based on neural networks to assist in identifying attribute correspondences in heterogeneous databases. SEMINT supports access to a variety of database systems and utilizes both schema information and data contents to produce rules for matching corresponding attributes automatically. This paper provides theoretical background and implementation details of SEMINT. Ex- perimental results from large and complex real databases are presented. We discuss the eectiveness of SEMINT and our experiences with attribute correspondence identi®cation in various environments. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Heterogeneous databases; Database integration; Attribute correspondence identi®cation; Neural networks 1. Introduction Advances in information technology have lead to an explosion in the number of databases accessible to a user. Although these databases are generally designed to be self-contained, serving a limited application domain, the ability to integrate data from multiple databases enables many new applications. For example, corporate decision-makers have realized that the huge amount of information stored in information systems is not only operational data; but an asset that can, when integrated, be used to support decision-making.
    [Show full text]
  • Web Service Semantics - WSDL-S
    Wright State University CORE Scholar The Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge- Kno.e.sis Publications Enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) 4-2005 Web Service Semantics - WSDL-S Rama Akkiraju Joel Farrell John A. Miller Wright State University - Main Campus Meenakshi Nagarajan Wright State University - Main Campus Amit P. Sheth Wright State University - Main Campus, [email protected] See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/knoesis Part of the Bioinformatics Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Databases and Information Systems Commons, OS and Networks Commons, and the Science and Technology Studies Commons Repository Citation Akkiraju, R., Farrell, J., Miller, J. A., Nagarajan, M., Sheth, A. P., & Verma, K. (2005). Web Service Semantics - WSDL-S. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/knoesis/69 This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the The Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-Enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kno.e.sis Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Rama Akkiraju, Joel Farrell, John A. Miller, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Amit P. Sheth, and Kunal Verma This report is available at CORE Scholar: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/knoesis/69 Web Service Semantics - WSDL-S Technical Note Version 1.0 April, 2005 Authors (alphabetically): Rama Akkiraju, IBM Research Joel Farrell, IBM Software Group John Miller, LSDIS Lab, University of Georgia Meenakshi Nagarajan, LSDIS Lab, University of Georgia Marc -Thomas Schmidt, IBM Software Group Amit Sheth, LSDIS Lab, University of Georgia Kunal Verma, LSDIS Lab, University of Georgia Copyright Notice Copyright© 2005 International Business Machines Corporation and University of Georgia.
    [Show full text]
  • An Approach to Manage Semantic Heterogeneity in Unstructured P2P Information Retrieval Systems Thomas Cerqueus, Sylvie Cazalens, Philippe Lamarre
    An Approach to Manage Semantic Heterogeneity in Unstructured P2P Information Retrieval Systems Thomas Cerqueus, Sylvie Cazalens, Philippe Lamarre To cite this version: Thomas Cerqueus, Sylvie Cazalens, Philippe Lamarre. An Approach to Manage Semantic Hetero- geneity in Unstructured P2P Information Retrieval Systems. IEEE International Conference on Peer- to-Peer Computing, Sep 2012, Tarragona, Spain. pp.178. hal-00731848 HAL Id: hal-00731848 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00731848 Submitted on 13 Sep 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License An Approach to Manage Semantic Heterogeneity in Unstructured P2P Information Retrieval Systems Thomas Cerqueus Sylvie Cazalens Philippe Lamarre LINA, UMR 6241 INRIA Sophia - LINA, UMR 6241 INSA-Lyon, LIRIS, UMR 5205, F69621 University of Nantes, France University of Nantes, France University of Lyon - CNRS, France [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—In unstructured information retrieval P2P systems, concepts. The entities of an ontology may be used to annotate semantic heterogeneity comes from the use of different ontolo- a peers’ documents. This is a simple way to provide a uniform gies.
    [Show full text]
  • Resolution of Semantic Heterogeneity in Database Schema Integration Using Formal Ontologies
    Information Technology and Management 6, 97–122, 2005 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.. Manufactured in The Netherlands. Resolution of Semantic Heterogeneity in Database Schema Integration Using Formal Ontologies FARSHAD HAKIMPOUR [email protected] Geographic Information Analysis Division, Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 190, Zurich, Switzerland ∗ ANDREAS GEPPERT [email protected] Credit Suisse, Zurich, Switzerland Abstract. This paper addresses the problem of handling semantic heterogeneity during database schema integration. We focus on the semantics of terms used as identifiers in schema definitions. Our solution does not rely on the names of the schema elements or the structure of the schemas. Instead, we utilize formal ontologies consisting of intensional definitions of terms represented in a logical language. The ap- proach is based on similarity relations between intensional definitions in different ontologies. We present the definitions of similarity relations based on intensional definitions in formal ontologies. The extensional consequences of intensional relations are addressed. The paper shows how similarity relations are discov- ered by a reasoning system using a higher-level ontology. These similarity relations are then used to derive an integrated schema in two steps. First, we show how to use similarity relations to generate the class hierarchy of the global schema. Second, we explain how to enhance the class definitions with attributes. This approach reduces the cost of generating or re-generating global schemas for tightly-coupled federated databases. Keywords: database integration, schema integration, formal ontologies, semantic heterogeneity In many domains, the number of data providers and amounts of available data is increas- ing. Data consumers require consistent views of the data available from heterogeneous data sources.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards a Ubiquitous User Model for Profile Sharing and Reuse
    Sensors 2012, 12, 13249-13283; doi:10.3390/s121013249 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors Article Towards a Ubiquitous User Model for Profile Sharing and Reuse Maria de Lourdes Martinez-Villaseñor 1,2,*, Miguel Gonzalez-Mendoza 2 and Neil Hernandez-Gress 2 1 Universidad Panamericana Campus México, Augusto Rodin 498, Col. Insurgentes-Mixcoac, Mexico City, 03920, Mexico 2 Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México Carr. Lago de Guadalupe, Km 3.5, Col. Margarita Maza de Juárez, Atizapán de Zaragoza, State of Mexico, 52926, Mexico; E-Mails: [email protected] (M.G.-M.); [email protected] (N.H.-G.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +52-5-554-821-600; Fax: +52-5-554-821-600 (ext. 6101). Received: 19 August 2012; in revised form: 23 September 2012 / Accepted: 24 September 2012 / Published: 28 September 2012 Abstract: People interact with systems and applications through several devices and are willing to share information about preferences, interests and characteristics. Social networking profiles, data from advanced sensors attached to personal gadgets, and semantic web technologies such as FOAF and microformats are valuable sources of personal information that could provide a fair understanding of the user, but profile information is scattered over different user models. Some researchers in the ubiquitous user modeling community envision the need to share user model’s information from heterogeneous sources. In this paper, we address the syntactic and semantic heterogeneity of user models in order to enable user modeling interoperability. We present a dynamic user profile structure based in Simple Knowledge Organization for the Web (SKOS) to provide knowledge representation for ubiquitous user model.
    [Show full text]
  • Ontology-Based Integration of Information — a Survey of Existing Approaches H
    Ontology-Based Integration of Information — A Survey of Existing Approaches H. Wache, T. Vogele,¨ U. Visser, H. Stuckenschmidt, G. Schuster, H. Neumann and S. Hubner¨ Intelligent Systems Group, Center for Computing Technologies, University of Bremen, P.O.B. 33 04 40, D-28334 Bremen, Germany e-mail: {wache|vogele|visser|heiner|schuster|neumann|huebner}@tzi.de Abstract in different structures. Semantic heterogeneity considers the contents of an information item and its intended meaning. We review the use on ontologies for the integra- In order to achieve semantic interoperability in a hetero- tion of heterogeneous information sources. Based geneous information system, the meaning of the information on an in-depth evaluation of existing approaches to that is interchanged has to be understood across the systems. this problem we discuss how ontologies are used Semantic conflicts occur whenever two contexts do not use to support the integration task. We evaluate and the same interpretation of the information. Goh identifies compare the languages used to represent the ontolo- three main causes for semantic heterogeneity [Goh, 1997]: gies and the use of mappings between ontologies • Confounding conflicts occur when information items as well as to connect ontologies with information seem to have the same meaning, but differ in reality, e.g. sources. We also enquire into ontology engineer- owing to different temporal contexts. ing methods and tools used to develop ontologies for information integration. Based on the results of • Scaling conflicts occur when different reference systems our analysis we summarize the state-of-the-art in are used to measure a value. Examples are different cur- ontology-based information integration and name rencies.
    [Show full text]
  • Approximate Semantic Matching of Heterogeneous Events
    Approximate Semantic Matching of Heterogeneous Events Souleiman Hasan Sean O’Riain Edward Curry Digital Enterprise Research Digital Enterprise Research Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) Institute (DERI) Institute (DERI) National University of Ireland, National University of Ireland, National University of Ireland, Galway Galway Galway [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Event-based systems have loose coupling within space, time and 1. INTRODUCTION Event-based technology is becoming more widely needed with synchronization, providing a scalable infrastructure for the rise of new applications ranging from smart homes to smart information exchange and distributed workflows. However, cities and the Internet-of-Things [1]. Event-based systems enable event-based systems are tightly coupled, via event subscriptions a decoupled mode of interaction between participants making it and patterns, to the semantics of the underlying event schema and suitable for large scale distributed environments [10]. There are values. The high degree of semantic heterogeneity of events in estimates that by the end of 2020 fifty billion devices will be large and open deployments such as smart cities and the sensor connected to mobile networks [22] which would push event-based web makes it difficult to develop and maintain event-based technology to its limits. systems. In order to address semantic coupling within event-based systems, we propose vocabulary free subscriptions together with While event-based systems are decoupled in space, time, and the use of approximate semantic matching of events. This paper synchronization [10], scaling out to include participants from examines the requirement of event semantic decoupling and diverse domains poses a challenge with the semantic discusses approximate semantic event matching and the interpretation of events.
    [Show full text]
  • A Framework Uniting Ontology-Based Geodata Integration and Geovisual Analytics
    International Journal of Geo-Information Article A Framework Uniting Ontology-Based Geodata Integration and Geovisual Analytics Linfang Ding 1,2, Guohui Xiao 1,3,* , Diego Calvanese 1,3,4 and Liqiu Meng 2 1 KRDB Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 39100 Bolzano, Italy; [email protected] (L.D.); [email protected] (D.C.) 2 Chair of Cartography, Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany; [email protected] 3 Ontopic S.r.L, 39100 Bolzano, Italy 4 Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 10 May 2020; Accepted: 27 July 2020; Published: 28 July 2020 Abstract: In a variety of applications relying on geospatial data, getting insights into heterogeneous geodata sources is crucial for decision making, but often challenging. The reason is that it typically requires combining information coming from different sources via data integration techniques, and then making sense out of the combined data via sophisticated analysis methods. To address this challenge we rely on two well-established research areas: data integration and geovisual analytics, and propose to adopt an ontology-based approach to decouple the challenges of data access and analytics. Our framework consists of two modules centered around an ontology: (1) an ontology-based data integration (OBDI) module, in which mappings specify the relationship between the underlying data and a domain ontology; (2) a geovisual analytics (GeoVA) module, designed for the exploration of the integrated data, by explicitly making use of standard ontologies. In this framework, ontologies play a central role by providing a coherent view over the heterogeneous data, and by acting as a mediator for visual analysis tasks.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Ontologies in Data Integration
    The Role of Ontologies in Data Integration Isabel F. Cruz Huiyong Xiao ADVIS Lab Department of Computer Science University of Illinois at Chicago, USA {ifc | hxiao}@cs.uic.edu Abstract In this paper, we discuss the use of ontologies for data integra- tion. We consider two different settings depending on the system architecture: central and peer-to-peer data integration. Within those settings, we discuss five different cases studies that illustrate the use of ontologies in metadata representation, in global conceptualization, in high-level querying, in declarative mediation, and in mapping support. Each case study is described in detail and accompanied by examples. 1 Introduction 1.1 Data Integration Data integration provides the ability to manipulate data transparently across multiple data sources. It is relevant to a number of applications including enterprise information integration, medical information management, geo- graphical information systems, and E-Commerce applications. Based on the architecture, there are two different kinds of systems: central data integra- tion systems [1, 3, 7, 10, 18, 22] and peer-to-peer data integration systems [2, 4, 5, 11, 16, 19]. A central data integration system usually has a global schema, which provides the user with a uniform interface to access informa- tion stored in the data sources. In contrast, in a peer-to-peer data integration system, there are no global points of control on the data sources (or peers). 1 Instead, any peer can accept user queries for the information distributed in the whole system. The two most important approaches for building a data integration sys- tem are Global-as-View (GaV) and Local-as-View (LaV) [22, 17].
    [Show full text]
  • A Semantic Approach to Enable Data Integration for the Domain of Flood
    Environmental Challenges 3 (2021) 100064 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Challenges journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envc A semantic approach to enable data integration for the domain of flood risk management Vatsala Nundloll a,∗, Rob Lamb a,b, Barry Hankin c, Gordon Blair a a Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK b JBA Trust, Skipton, UK c JBA Consulting Ltd., Skipton, UK a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Keywords: With so many things around us continuously producing and processing data, be it mobile phones, or sensors Ontologies attached to devices, or satellites sitting thousands of kilometres above our heads, data is becoming increasingly Structured data heterogeneous. Scientists are inevitably faced with data challenges, coined as the 4 V’s of data - volume, variety, Unstructured data velocity and veracity. In this paper, we address the issue of data variety. The task of integrating and querying such Semantic integration heterogeneous data is further compounded if the data is in unstructured form. We hence propose an approach Natural language processing Flood risk management using Semantic Web and Natural Language Processing techniques to resolve the heterogeneity arising in data formats, bring together structured and unstructured data and provide a unified data model to query from disparate data sets. 1. Introduction The task of integrating data is further compounded with unstruc- tured forms of data. Many existing approaches talk about integrating Recent advances in technology have led to an explosion in the avail- structured data mostly. With technological advances in Natural Lan- ability of data, often referred to as ‘big data’.
    [Show full text]
  • Implicit, Formal, and Powerful Semantics in Geoinformation
    International Journal of Geo-Information Article Implicit, Formal, and Powerful Semantics in Geoinformation Gloria Bordogna , Cristiano Fugazza * , Paolo Tagliolato Acquaviva d’Aragona and Paola Carrara Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, National Research Council of Italy, via Bassini 15, I20133 Milan, Italy; [email protected] (G.B.); [email protected] (P.T.A.d.); [email protected] (P.C.) * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Distinct, alternative forms of geosemantics, whose classification is often ill-defined, emerge in the management of geospatial information. This paper proposes a workflow to identify patterns in the different practices and methods dealing with geoinformation. From a meta-review of the state of the art in geosemantics, this paper first pinpoints “keywords” representing key concepts, challenges, methods, and technologies. Then, we illustrate several case studies, following the categorization into implicit, formal, and powerful (i.e., soft) semantics depending on the kind of their input. Finally, we associate the case studies with the previously identified keywords and compute their similarities in order to ascertain if distinguishing methodologies, techniques, and challenges can be related to the three distinct forms of semantics. The outcomes of the analysis sheds some light on the diverse methods and technologies that are more suited to model and deal with specific forms of geosemantics. Keywords: geosemantics; implicit semantics; formal semantics; powerful semantics 1. Introduction Citation: Bordogna, G.; Fugazza, C.; Tagliolato Acquaviva d’Aragona, P.; Semantics is cornerstone in state-of-the-art data management, notwithstanding the Carrara, P. Implicit, Formal, and specific domain; without semantics, we would helplessly drown in a deluge of unintelli- Powerful Semantics in gible Big Data.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparing New Semantic Web Approaches with Those of Digital
    Library Review Semantic heterogeneity: comparing new semantic web approaches with those of digital libraries Jürgen Krause Article information: To cite this document: Jürgen Krause, (2008),"Semantic heterogeneity: comparing new semantic web approaches with those of digital libraries", Library Review, Vol. 57 Iss 3 pp. 235 - 248 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00242530810865501 Downloaded on: 30 May 2016, At: 04:45 (PT) References: this document contains references to 22 other documents. To copy this document: [email protected] The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 1073 times since 2008* Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: (2005),"Semantic Web technologies for digital libraries", Library Management, Vol. 26 Iss 4/5 pp. 190-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435120510596044 (2009),"The semantic web and the digital library", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 61 Iss 3 pp. 316-322 http:// dx.doi.org/10.1108/00012530910959844 (2005),"Digital libraries in the knowledge era: Knowledge management and Semantic Web technologies", Library Management, Vol. 26 Iss 4/5 pp. 170-175 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435120510596026 Downloaded by University College London At 04:45 30 May 2016 (PT) Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:368933 [] For Authors If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society.
    [Show full text]