Some observations on the complexity of vocabularies...for EIIF

Frank, Paola et al,

For interoperability we need some harmonized vocabularies and
glossaries, such as ICDRM help mature the effort.  But you can see
part of the challenge looking at the ICDRM set.  There is no entry for
"victim", which was one item that Paola was using as a main example.
Instead we have some related terms such as "actor" which mentions the
victim role in a simulation context.  It's defined as:

   Actor: Individual simulating a victim, victim family, media,
perpetrator, or other person within the exercise scenario to prompt
realistic action/reaction from the exercise players.

So there is a gap there.

On the other hand the Glossary has any number of informational items
that we might add such as Alert, which discusses related terms (e.g.
“advisory”) and a supertype "notification" :

Alert: A notification category between “advisory” and “activation”
that provides urgent information and indicates that system action may
be necessary. An alert can be used for initial notification that
incident activation is likely, and for ongoing notification throughout
an incident to convey incident information and directed or recommended
actions (see “advisory” – “alert” – “activation” for contrast between
the other notification categories).

Notification: Information distributed to relevant personnel that
contains important information regarding an actual or potential hazard
impact and the response status of the organization. There are
generally four categories of notification: update, alert, advisory,
and activation.

I would suggest that we take such useful items to supplement our
vocabulary and try to harmonize them.  Showing explicit taxonomies
helps do that. These should find their way into the Information Model.
And having some agreement on a core set of semantic relations is also
important.

I'm not sure if any of the good work at GWU has looked at a taxonomic
skeleton for the glossary or a system set of relations.  Some work on
glossaries is also using natural language processing (NLP) tools to
"extract" preliminary ontologic models and perhaps someone in the WG
has access to such a tool to see what vocabularies they come up with.
I'd certainly enjoying on this with such a tool.

-- 
Gary Berg-Cross,Ph.D.
gbergcross@gmail.com      http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
SOCoP Executive Secretary
Principal, EM&I Semantic Technology
Potomac, MD
 301-762-5441


On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:14 AM,  <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Gary and Frank
>
> these will be added to our library of glossaries
> somehow all this abundance of glossaries IS part of the problem space that
> we are trying to address
>
> I ll have a flat list of (candidate) definitions up (independent from
> properties and classes etc) at some point soon
>
> PDM
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:34 PM, Gary Berg-Cross <gbergcross@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Paola et al,
>>
>> I've had a little time to search for some relevant vocabularies.  Here
>> is one that seems to provide some useful definitions and hierarchies
>> for terms:
>>
>> GEMET, the GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus, developed by
>> the European Topic Centre on Catalogue of Data Sources under contract
>> to the European Environment Agency.
>>
>>
>> Currently published and managed by the European Environment
>> Information and Observation Network.
>>
>> GEMET is a compilation of several multilingual vocabularies, and has
>> been designed as a general thesaurus, aiming to define a core general
>> terminology for the environment. The current version is available in
>> 27 languages, and contains over 6,000 descriptors.
>>
>> See http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet   for the vocabularies.  They
>> have and extensive list  of Themes each of which has terms.  So they
>> have a "  disasters, accidents, risk " theme with relevant terms such
>> as:
>>
>> Emergency plan  Concept definition:
>> Program of procedures to be undertaken in the event of a sudden,
>> urgent and usually unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action,
>> especially an incident of potential harm to human life, property or
>> the environment. (Source: RHW)
>>
>> broader terms
>>                safety measure
>>
>>
>> narrower terms
>>                risk exposure plan
>>
>>                warning plan
>>
>> Scope note:
>> Program of procedures to be undertaken in the event of a sudden,
>> urgent and usually unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action,
>> especially an incident of potential harm to human life, property or
>> the environment. (Source: RHW)
>>
>> Groups: RISKS, SAFETY
>> Themes: disasters, accidents, risk
>>
>>
>> There's similiar info on emergency relief   Concept definition:
>> Money, food or other assistance provided for those surviving a sudden
>> and usually unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action,
>> especially an incident of potential harm to human life, property or
>> the environment. (Source: RHW) etc.
>>
>> Gary Berg-Cross,Ph.D.
>> gbergcross@gmail.com
>>  http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
>> SOCoP Executive Secretary
>> Principal, EM&I Semantic Technology
>> Potomac, MD
>>  301-762-5441
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 5:30 PM,  <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > So, today I started entering the terms used in our framework in Knoodl,
>> >
>> > http://www.knoodl.com/ui/groups/Emergency_Management/vocab/EIIF_Glossary/entry/
>> >
>> > It's still a very rough exercise and  sketchy, cause some info is still
>> > not
>> > clear (to me at least) or missing altogether
>> >
>> > In addition to the learning curve of understanding where all the knoodl
>> > buttons are and what to do (it's suppoed to be easy but there are things
>> > I
>> > cannot do yet, will need help asap!)
>> >  a few things are not yet clear that need to be defined further before
>> > we
>> > can proceed, see the enclosed draft document
>> >
>> > we need to define what is a property, a class, a subclass and, instance,
>> > relations etc
>> >
>> > these choices can be changed later at any time, so we can
>> > discuss-rediscuss
>> > at leisure what would work best for everybody
>> > in the meantime, but in the meantime this exercise could help us to
>> > clarify
>> > at least in part what the current documetn and corresponding diagram
>> > represent would be helpful
>> >
>> > also some terms are still  a bit obscure, such as 'interval'  in
>> > location
>> >
>> > I attach my working notes, which would benefit from input from the
>> > group, I
>> > will not be able to look at this again for another few days
>> >
>> > please provide feedback before our final deadline, and I ll enter the
>> > resources as specified by this group
>> >
>> > btw, today I got a set of terms from FEMA, that would be nice to map to
>> > our
>> > framework at some point
>> >
>> > anyone wanted to play around with KNoodl, just join the community and
>> > you ll
>> > be in in no time
>> >
>> > thanks in advance
>> >
>> >
>> > have a nice weekend all!
>> >
>> >
>> > cheers
>> > PDM
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>
>
>
> --
> Paola Di Maio,
> ****************************************
> Forthcoming
> IEEE/DEST 09 Collective Intelligence Track (deadline extended)
>
> i-Semantics 2009, 2 - 4 September 2009, Graz, Austria.
> www.i-semantics.tugraz.at
>
> SEMAPRO 2009, Malta
> http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/CfPSEMAPRO09.html
> **************************************************
> Mae Fah Luang Child Protection Project, Chiang Rai Thailand
>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 31 March 2009 15:26:38 UTC