AOS Project And Realization 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
November 2001 • FAO launches the AOS Initiative • 1. AOS workshop in Rome • Building of a Launch Group for the AOS • Decision about Prototypes But extreme scepticism about the usability “Ontologies” , “RDF”, “Semantic Web” were very, very strange words at that time, nearly embarrassing to use 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
May 2004 • RDF and OWL have become official Recommendations by the W3C • The last Gartner report declared Taxonomies/Ontologies to one of the key technologies of the next year • Everyone uses the word Ontology without being embarrassed BUT 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
May 2004 • There is still no AOS • The Launch Group dissociated soon after the 2. Workshop in Oxford • None of the decided prototypes has been materialized as it was planned So did we fail? 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
By No Means! • In 2001 we were anticipating knowledge, technology and institutional availability for the introduction of semantic technology into Agricultural Information Systems And we were right to do so 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Where are we today? - Awareness • Awareness has grown, who today denies that semantic matters? • 5 AOS Workshops and various publications had an impact (We get now invitations to other conferences) • The AGROVOC downloads have risen to about 5-10/month • Similar initiatives are following (Ecoterm) 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
~100 domain Specific documents List of frequent terms Text To Onto 1st acquisitionapproach 2nd acquisitionapproach Revised Ontology Pruner Pruned Agrovoc: ~3000 concepts AGROVOC Merging & Refinement Ontology Editor (OIModeler) Where are we today? - Research 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Where are we today? - Applications • First Portals in FAO using RDFS encoded Ontologies • The Fishery Ontology is a very ambitious project to integrated information access in that domain • Participation in projects on CWR, Food Safety….. • Transferring bibliographical databases in ontological structures • Other projects 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Where are we today? - Funding • The AOS by itself needs a stronger institutional backbone to attract donor money • GIL has attracted (is in preparation for) donor money in smaller projects (EU 6th framework, CGIAR trusts) 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Do We Need to change the AOS concept? • Tim Berners Lee: The web is like a big relational database without relations • And every one knows: wildly added table, records, non defined relations will lead to data corruption • That is where the AOS projects wants to contribute.Defining meaningful concepts and relations for common use. 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Users search and browse application using components User feedback We Do Not Need to change the AOS concept! Extraction of KOS KOS uses components to build an application Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Federated storage and description facility for Knowledge Organization Systems Adding of more KOS Discussions and choices for amendments to components 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
The Agricultural Ontology Service is an approach to organize knowledge organization systems that is • International • The Internet must become plurilingual • Multidisciplinary • The area of subjects is broad and needs various inputs 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Cooperative • different expert knowledge has to be associated and used • Distributed • no central ownership should be looked for • Coordinated • Coordination must ensure reusability and standardization 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
Where are we today – lessons learned • Using existing Ontologies (bibliographical databases) • Put bits and pieces together • Reform AGROVOC • Resolve the AGROVOC/ CABTHESAURUS/ NAL –Thesaurus relation • Go for Microfunding • Get the institutional framework bigger 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
The Information Management Clearinghouse • More and more organizations are concerned about consistency and coherence in Agricultural Information Systems • May 2003: DFID workshop about this topic. In the Report FAO is asked to seek for a clearinghouse on Standards 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
The next steps in the AOS initiative • (Many small ones – Portals, Domain Ontologies, collaborations, funding proposals) • The AOS Concept and Terminology Server (Webservice) • Manifesto for the “Semantic Standards” network • Next Coherence workshop in September in Rome 5th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004
