Re: eiif and my question/comment on Section 4 -Towards common ontology

Gary
following your suggestion below,
what process should we follow to achieve what you propose?
how would that fit with the effort to match the existing schema/draft
into DOLCE categories? is what you propose a similar step, into a slightly
different direction? is it compatible? is it an alternative?

thanks
PDM

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 12:07 AM, Gary Berg-Cross <gbergcross@gmail.com>wrote:

> Paola et al,
>
> My questions was about the role of this section "Towards Common
> Ontology" in the overall EII Framework.
>
> We say the role of the ontologies is for"collection of the semantics"
> and critique NIEM in not having an overall framework for the
> overlapping/ diverse semantics they include, but we provide no overall
> framework for semantics ourselves or point to one that we agree with.
> So my question was "what do we want to do in this section and how far
> would we try to go to frame a semantic approach here?"
>
> A common ontology by itself may not be a frame, but the way that
> ontologies are used to support our conceptual framework etc. might be
> the way this section contributes.
>
> It seemed in our discussion the group is starting to be more explicit
> and expressive about "emergency information" vocabulary - the who,
> what, where and when of emergencies. I think that this may be
> compatible with some of the other semantic interoperability thrusts
> and semantic annotation efforts.
>
>  I offered to do a bit ofo review for  the "where" dimension.  Here's
> an example of what I was thinking of there.  It's in 2 steps -
> leverage existing standards that have a start on a core vocabulary and
> then add some semantic rigor to this to better support
> interchangeability (integrate disparate information to present in a
> common form) and interoperability (use information at an application,
> pragmatic, and process control level).
>
> Here is an example of step one:
>
> Core vocabulary for Where (geospatial concepts)
>
> I would start with the Geography Markup Language (GML) - a standard
> whose model was originally based on the W3C Resource Description
> Framework (RDF). For exchange  the OGC introduced XML schemas into
> GML's structure to help connect the various existing geographic
> databases, whose relational structure XML schemas more easily define.
> The resulting XML-schema-based GML retains many features of RDF,
> including the idea of child elements as properties of the parent
> object (RDFS) and the use of remote property references.
>
> For our where Q GML contains a rich set of primitives which are used
> to build application specific schemas or application languages. These
> primitives include:
>
> •       Feature – a  distinction from a geometry object. A feature is an
> object in our doaim that represents a physical entity, e.g. a
> building, a river, rescue area, or a person.  We are primarily
> interested in these, but need the other concepts to locate them or
> describe them  as in locating and describing a rescue area.
>
> •       Geometry – things like Point. LineString or Polygon that may
> describe a Feature
> •       Coordinate Reference System to provide coordinates of geometry
> objects (e.g. line coordinates)
>
> •       Time (BTW for better semantics there is Jerry Hobb's OWL-Time
>                            http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-time/
> •       Coverage (including geographic images)
> •       Unit of measure etc.
>
> This is a start we can leverage and they are also moving to enhance
> the semantics by "annotating" this vocabulary with better semantics.
> For example, there are many types of geospatial "part" relations that
> can be make more explicit.  We should leverage this work and not try
> to re-invent it.
>
> Part of the work I am thinking of is out of the sensor standards work
> partly supported by NIST and by OGC. Amit Sheth has a demo on semantic
> annotations that enhance primarily syntactic XML-based descriptions
> with what OGC calls Sensor Web Enablement (SWE ) languages -
> microformats, and W3C's Semantic Web languages- RDF and OWL. The
> combination of semantic annotation and semantic web capabilities
> i(ontologies and rules)  "supports interoperability, analysis and
> reasoning over heterogeneous multi-modal sensor data".
>
> http://knoesis.wright.edu/research/semsci/application_domain/sem_senso,
> July-August 2008, pp. 78-83.
>  Amit Sheth and Matthew Perry, "Traveling the Semantic Web through
> Space, Time and Theme
>
>
> Gary Berg-Cross
>
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:59 AM,  <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gary, and all
> >
> > can you you please repeat the question that you had in commenting the
> > paragraph 'toward common ontology'?
> >
> > When I first joined this group, the word ontology itself was avoided, to
> > avoid entering in the realm of the ' too abstract and complicated' to be
> > useful. Obviously members of this incubator have become more comfortable
> > using the term since we started and, inevitably now we have to become
> > semantically more precise.
> >
> > So, if we have to talk about ontology in our draft framework document,
> this
> > would be a good time to start
> > doing so properly.
> >
> > At the moment what we have is a schema, which in  itself it would be
> great
> > to have, because ultimately, in  a functinal sense,  that's what we need
> to
> > make the information flow a bit more coherent , functional and efficient.
> >
> > To make sure that our schema is compatible with the grand scheme of
> things,
> > and universals and primitives, may require some additional refinement of
> our
> > conceptual model. This will result in our schema to be more versatile
> robust
> > and consistent and much more useful in time.
> >
> > Please share your thoughts with us, and let's ponder what choices we have
> to
> > confront to move our work up to the metaphysical ladder (hehe, joking)
> >
> > Guido Vetere who has recently joined this group said that he is going to
> > send some considerations and suggestions on how to model our schema to
> > comply with DOLCE,
> >
> > http://www.loa-cnr.it/Papers/DOLCE2.1-FOL.pdf
> >
> > which I very much look forward to seeing his contribution
> >
> >
> > Gary, which foundational ontology have you worked with before? What would
> be
> > your suggestions to
> > align our work with top level categories of sorts?
> >
> > I think it is a challenge for bottom up schemas (what we are doing now)
> to
> > comply with foundational requirements,
> > as well as it is a chellenge for foundational ontologies to be
> > adopted/applied in bottom up schemas creation
> >
> > So  starting thinking in terms of ontology proper is an interesting and
> > important exercise that we cannot longer postpone
> > and hopefully we'll learn what we need to learn along the way
> >
> >
> > pdm
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Paola Di Maio
> > School of IT
> > MFU.ac.th
> > *********************************************
> >
> >
>



-- 
Paola Di Maio
School of IT
MFU.ac.th
*********************************************