RE: Observations and Measurement - draft

Ralph Hodgson who leads QUDT effort sent an e-mail to the list regarding
QUDT, but his message never got posted. I am repeating the content of the
e-mail below:

I am the ontology lead for NASA's QUDT work.  QUDT stands for 'Quantities,
Units, Dimensions and Types'. 

QUDT has a website at http://qudt.org and catalog pages at
http://www.linkedmodel.org/catalog/qudt/1.1/index.html, where you can
download OWL models (schemas) and vocabularies. 

QUDT has both a simple representation of units and a full dimensional
treatment. Using dimensions the ontology can compute quantities from
quantity expressions. For example, you can ask what is the quantity I get if
I multiply a mass and an acceleration. Using rules over dimensions, the
ontology will answer 'Force'.

QUDT can be browsed using SPIN Services - an ontology driven user interface
approach based on "SPARQL Web Pages".  You can use this link as an example -
http://spinservices.org:8080/spin/doc.swp?baseURI=http://qudt.org/1.1/vocab/
dimensionalunit

QUDT will become a NASA Handbook this year.  We are working on a new release
of QUDT that will have substantially more systems of quantities and both
RDF/OWL and XML representations. We will also have support for measurements,
observations and calibrations.

This will be release 2.0 because of changes we are doing on URIs.

Irene Polikoff 
Mobile Phone: +1 914-329-8576
CEO, www.topquadrant.com, @TopQuadrant
Voyages of the Semantic Enterprise
Trainings: Introduction to Semantic Web Technologies: What They are and How
to Use Them - Next Class, March 5-8, 2012;
TopBraid Suite Advanced Product Training - Next Class, May 21-24 , 2012



-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas, George (OS/ASA/OCIO/OEA) [mailto:George.Thomas1@hhs.gov] 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 10:01 AM
To: Luis Bermudez; Dan Gillman
Cc: Benedikt Kämpgen; public-gld-wg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Observations and Measurement - draft

At the GLD-WG F2F1 [1] a presentation was given by TopQuadrant [2] on
'Linked Data Models' [3], which mentions a number of interesting
ontologies including QUDT [4] that might be of interest here.

-g

[1] http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/F2F1
[2] http://www.topquadrant.com/
[3] 
http://www.topquadrant.com/resources/Internal%20Presentations/TQ%20-%20Link
edModels.ppt
[4] http://qudt.org/

On 3/9/12 9:55 AM, "Luis Bermudez" <lbermudez@opengeospatial.org> wrote:

>Hi Dan
>
>Good questions.
>
>Observation and Measurement  (O&M)  is the overall container for
>different concepts related to observations: Procedure, Property, Feature
>of Interest and Result. I recently learned that there is an O&M ontology
>[2] developed by CSIRO. Simon Cox is the editor of O&M and he also
>developed this ontology. I think it is fairly new so I do not think there
>are a lot of examples out there. However some examples of O&M in XML can
>be found at the OGC Schemas repositories [1]. This can help clarify what
>you can do with O&M. O&M also provides details of how the result can be
>expressed depending on the result type. For example the ontology has
>subclasses based on the type of observation, such as CategoryObservation,
>CountObservations and GeometryObservation.
>
>The Result not only contains the values but also the units of measure.
>Dealing with Units of Measure is at another level and should be treated
>separately. A units of measure ontology should contain enough information
>that lets you know how to make conversions from one unit to another, or
>if two values can be comparable. Similarly, the same applies for the
>other main  components of O&M, like Feature of Interest or Procedure.
>They should all have specialize ontologies. For example different
>ontologies can exist and be plugged in that properly describe procedures
>for statistical methods, numerical models or sensors.
>
>Within OGC there are two ways to express Units of Measure: 1) via URIs,
>defined in an ontology or 2) using UCUM [3]. UCUM is very well designed.
>It is based on base units and nomenclature that can be use to express all
>the other units. It has also an API. I know ontolog [4] also worked on a
>units ontology and they looked at UCUM. I'm not sure about the status of
>the ontolog work but I can ask. I also know that UCUM deals with the
>dimension issue you mentioned. See specification, Section 3 semantics [5]
>and example for Healthcare Units [6].
>
>
>[1] http://schemas.opengis.net/om/2.0/examples/
>[2] http://def.seegrid.csiro.au/ontology/isotc211/om
>[3] http://unitsofmeasure.org/
>[4] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UoM_Ontology_Standard
>[5] http://aurora.regenstrief.org/~ucum/ucum.html
>[5] http://www.hl7.de/download/documents/ucum/ucumdata.html
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Luis
>-------------
>Luis Bermudez
>lbermudez@opengeospatial.org
>+1 (301) 760-7323 
>
>The OGC: Making Location Count...
>http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact
>
>
>
>
>On Mar 8, 2012, at 5:09 PM, Gillman, Daniel - BLS wrote:
>
>> Luis,
>> 
>> In this Observation and Measurement scheme, is there a way to record
>>equivalent units of measure?  Suppose I am measuring the speed of a car
>>using a radar gun on some road at a dangerous curve where people usually
>>drive too fast, and the radar gun reports the speed in miles per hour.
>>Then, suppose someone else repeats the experiment using the same radar
>>gun, but the machine is set to report kilometers per hour instead.  How
>>do we know that all data reported in mph can be converted to data in
>>kph, and vice-versa?
>> 
>> The ISO/IEC 11179 standard
>>(http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html)
>>introduced the notion of dimensionality, the name coming from the
>>dimensional analysis that scientists use to convert units of measure.
>>However, this takes a wider view to include units of measure that are
>>not a part of the scientific set, and the idea doesn't depend on the
>>faux algebra of cancelling the same units in numerator and denominator.
>> 
>> Dimensionality depends chiefly on the set of operations, very similar
>>to datatypes, that data in a unit of measure are allowed.  Take
>>temperatures measured in degrees Celsius.  One can subtract them, take
>>averages and similar statistics, but scalar multiplication makes no
>>sense.  For instance, twice 10C is not 20C.  Therefore, data in degrees
>>Fahrenheit are convertible to Celsius, since they share the same
>>operations.  Interestingly, under this definition, Kelvin is not an
>>equivalent measuring system, and that is because scalar multiplication
>>makes sense in Kelvin.
>> 
>> Yours,
>> Dan
>> 
>> 
>> Dan Gillman
>> Bureau of Labor Statistics
>> Office of Survey Methods Research
>> 2 Massachusetts Ave, NE
>> Washington, DC 20212 USA
>> Tel     +1.202.691.7523
>> FAX    +1.202.691.7426
>> Email  Gillman.Daniel@BLS.Gov
>> -----------------------------------------
>> "He has all the virtues I dislike
>> and none of the vices I admire."
>> - Winston Churchill
>> ------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Luis Bermudez [mailto:lbermudez@opengeospatial.org]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 11:10 AM
>> To: Benedikt Kämpgen
>> Cc: public-gld-wg@w3.org
>> Subject: Observations and Measurement - draft
>> 
>> All,
>> 
>> Comments about Observations and Measurement related to:
>> 
>> - Section: Publishing Statistical Data
>> - http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/track/issues/32
>> - @@TODO: Are there any statements about compatibility and
>>interoperability between O&M and Data Cube that can be made to give
>>guidance to such organizations?
>> 
>> Suggest to use Observations and Measurements (OM) model.
>> 
>> An Observation is an event whose result is an estimate of the value of
>>some property of a feature of interest, obtained using a specified
>>procedure.
>> 
>> An Observation has essentially the following parts:
>> 
>> Procedure: e.g. person, sensor, observatory, model, macro.
>> Property: e.g. temperature, color, weight.
>> Feature of Interest: e.g. body, world, Washington DC, banana, specimen
>>123, Monterey Bay.
>> Result: The actual value. Includes categories and quantities results,
>>time series, multimedia (video, audio), one single value, a file, etc.
>> 
>> So in the figure: "Modeling quantity, measurement, observation" we can
>>do the following:
>> 
>> Add Procedure, Result, Feature of Interest and Property Model Person as
>>a type of Procedure Remove Measurement Category and Quantity are
>>subclass of result.
>> Phenomenon Type is same as Property
>> 
>> 
>> Luis
>> -------------
>> Luis Bermudez
>> lbermudez@opengeospatial.org
>> +1 (301) 760-7323
>> 
>> The OGC: Making Location Count...
>> http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 22, 2012, at 11:38 AM, Benedikt Kämpgen wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> We have further refined the Data Cube use cases and copied the content
>>> from the wiki into an Editor's Draft for "Use Cases and Requirements
>>> for the Data Cube Vocabulary" [1].
>>> 
>>> Feedback of any kind would be well appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Benedikt
>>> 
>>> [1] 
>>> <http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gld/raw-file/default/data-cube-ucr/index.html>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> AIFB, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
>>> Phone: +49 721 608-47946
>>> Email: benedikt.kaempgen@kit.edu
>>> Web: http://www.aifb.kit.edu/web/Hauptseite/en
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>

Received on Monday, 12 March 2012 16:58:14 UTC