2007 08 26 Dc Keynote Keizer - Presentation Transcript
helping to build a world without hunger FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
World Food Summit 1996 Reducing Hunger and Poverty in the World by 50% in 2015 "The Rome Declaration calls upon us to reduce by half the number of chronically undernourished people on the Earth by the year 2015 .... If each of us gives his or her best I believe that we can meet and even exceed the target we have set for ourselves.""The Rome Declaration calls upon us to reduce by half the number of chronically undernourished people on the Earth by the year 2015 .... If each of us gives his or her best I believe that we can meet and even exceed the target we have set for ourselves.“ "We have the possibility to do it. We have the knowledge. We have the resources. And with the Rome Declaration and the Plan of Action, we've shown that we have the will."
Information and Knowledge Management at FAO
The First Article of the FAO Constitution: “ The Organization shall collect, analyse, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture .”
A specific objective of FAO’s Strategic Framework
In response to the World Food Summit (1996)
“ improve decision-making through the provision of information and assessments and fostering of knowledge management for food and agriculture.”
A new focus on FAO as a “Knowledge Organization” as approved by the FAO Council
AGMES – Application Profiles
Building Blocks for a Semantic Web Space in Food and Agriculture
Gauri Salokhe [email_address] http://www.salokhe.com Johannes Keizer [email_address] http://www.johanneskeizer.com
Starting Points in 2000
AGRIS (FAO Documentation)
AGROVOC
And there was a question :
Is there any need to invest in metadata and vocabularies in the age of electronic information ?
…… . we went 2001 to Ottawa to participate the first time in the Dublin Core meetings
...... since then we are knitting the semantic web in our area
Resources we are dealing with..
Document – Like Information Objects (DLIOs)
Learning resources
Organizations
Projects
News and Events
Document – Like Information Objects - About
Starting point was the AGRIS Database, which gathers bibliographic information from over 200+ centres from across the world
It currently contains 2.5 million bibliographic records.
Before the year 2000, participating centers were forced to use a proprietary software or complicated format conversions were necessary at the central database
...our starting point was simple: exchange of bibliographical data between different repositories center3 center1 center2 center4 service 2 common exchange layer service etc. center2 center1 center3 center4 services
Document – Like Information Objects – Our Proposal
The AGRIS Application Profile (AGRIS AP) is a metadata standard created specifically to enhance the description, exchange and subsequent retrieval of agricultural Document-Like Information Objects (DLIOs).
It is a metadata schema which draws elements from well known Metadata standards such as
Dublin Core (DC),
Australian Government Locator Service Metadata (AGLS), and
Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AgMES) namespaces.
It allows sharing of information across dispersed bibliographic systems and provides guidelines on recommended best practices for cataloguing and subject indexing.
Document – Like Information Objects – the metadata
Implementation of the AGRIS AP
…… . many discussions
main points:
- too many elements
too complicated
but we did not surrender
Why not simple DC?
Citation
For example, the citation information using AGRIS AP is displayed as:
<ags:citation>
<ags:citationTitle>Journal of Agricultural Research and Extension (Thailand)</ags:citationTitle>
Figure 3. The Data Providers : open archives . A data provider can export metadata in different metadata formats ( Figure 3 ). The Unqualified Dublin Core is the basic metadata format for OAI Protocol, but the function of DC is basically to facilitate the exchange of metadata at cross-domain level, to enable the communication outside of the specific communities. For AGRIS Community, as other subject networks, it is necessary the use of a richer metadata format. For that AGRIS Iniative will encourage the export in AGRIS AP in order to guarantee a high level in the quality of description of agricultural information resources. The AGRIS—AP now underpins the new model of the AGRIS network Data Management Archival Storage Access Description Cataloguing Metadata Export Dublin Core Unqualified MARC21 AGRIS AP Self-archiving
Home The AGRIS—AP now underpins the new model of the AGRIS network Figure 2. Agris Network: Content Management . The Figure 2 shows the main elements in the workflow for AGRIS Network and their connections following the new architecture. Conceptually, the workflow is divided in two principal actions: content management and exposing metadata . Information Management Specialist Metadata + Full text Software AGRIS Website Agris Service Providers Standards Users Researcher Open Access External Service Providers Agris Data Providers Content Management Self Archiving Knowledge Exchange Directories Methods Internet
The United Nations General Assembly recognizes the crucial role of capacity building for achieving the Millennium Development Goals
It has called upon the United Nations organizations to increase their support to developing countries’ own efforts.
Capacity and institution building is a core function of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
Learning resources – Our Proposal
In order to provide structured access to FAO’s agricultural learning resources and capacity and institution building services, the “Capacity and Institution Building Portal” project was started in 2006.
A metadata standard was needed to assure that each resource will be described appropriately.
Learning resources - the metadata
(DC) Title
(AGS) Supplement Title
(DC) Creator
(DC) Subject
(AGS) subjectCategories
(AGS) subjectThesaurus
(DC) Description
(DCTERMS) Abstract
(AGS) Notes
(DC) Publisher
(DCTERMS) Date
(DC) Type
(DC) Format-Type
(LOM) Aggregation Level
(LOM) Size
(DC) Identifier
(DC) Language
(DC) Relation
(DCTERMS) Coverage
(DC) Rights
(LOM) Cost
(LOM) Intended End User Role
(LOM) Context
(LOM) Interactivity Level
(LOM) Typical Learning Time
Learning resources – Next Steps
The “Capacity and Institution Building Portal” will be made available to FAO staff and member countries towards the end of the year
Approximately, 300+ records have been identified in FAO as learning resources. Metadata for these resources is being created according to the Learning Resources AP
Strong collaboration with the CGIAR Learning Resource Initiative
Organizations - About
Information on agricultural organizations is available from many different information services with independent databases.
Very few of these systems share data among themselves and in no case do they coherently integrate data.
This translates into three major difficulties:
maintenance is costly;
similar (but incomprehensive) information is available from several sources;
visibility in all the existing databases requires submitting the same data to multiple databases.
Organizations – Our Proposal
Provide a web-based tool that allows everyone to create metadata about their organization.
The tool will come with guidelines on "how-to" create the metadata file.
The XML file will be stored on institutes’ webserver and the URL will be registered in a central server
The central server can be exploited to create other value-added services as desired.
Periodic update requests will be sent out to all the organizations.
Organizations – the metadata
(AGS) organizationName
(AGS) fullOrganizationName
(AGS) organizationAcronym
(AGS) address
(AGS) streetAddress
(AGS) country
(AGS) telephone
(AGS) fax
(AGS) telex
(AGS) email
(DC) identifier (scheme “dcterms:URI”)
(DC) description
(DC) subject
(AGS) subjectThesaurus
(AGS) organizationType
(DC) relation
(DCTERMS) isPartOf (sugg: scheme “dcterms:URI”)
(DCTERMS) replaces (sugg: scheme “dcterms:URI”)
(DC) date
(DCTERMS) created
(DCTERMS) modified
Organizations – Next Steps
The “metamaker” is under construction
The registry is being developed by our partner organization the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
Data will be collected by targeting the partner organizations (CGIAR, GFIS etc.)
Projects - About
Repositories of Project metadata exist but...
maintenance is costly;
similar (but incomprehensive) information is available from several sources;
visibility in all the existing databases requires submitting the same data to multiple databases.
Promote data sharing
Projects – Our Proposal
To develop core data standard for enable sharing of project metadata describing projects by evaluating existing standards;
Provide user friendly documentation on the list of fields used to describe and share project information and best practices on encoding them; and
To provide machine-readable encoding (such as eXtensible Markup Language) to allow automatic validation of shared information.
Partner organization (WIS International), with FAO, is developing a proposal for the metadata standard.
Projects – the metadata
Project Name
Project Code : What is on the document
Project Description
Project Objectives
Project Subject
subject categories (ASC)
keywords (AGROVOC)
Project Budget
Project Duration
start date
end date
extension date
Project identifier (URL)
Project status
Project coverage.spatial
Donor(s)
Participating organizations : Organizations that have received funding and are carrying out the project.
name
acronym
address (City, Country)
Coordinator
Contact name
Contact organization
Contact email
Contact telephone
Projects – Next Steps
Get an agreement from partners on the elements
Provide a XML DTD for validation of the metadata files
Promote the standard as a possible “means” for sharing project information without going into too many details .
News and Events - About
An event is defined here as “something that happens at a given place and time.” An event can be broken into different ‘subsets’, for example by day or session. In this document, it will be the larger entity that will be addressed.
For example, some of the events in FAO are:
Eighth AOS Workshop -- 7 years of AOS: Achievements and Next Steps , Rome, Italy. 21-22 September 2007
Special Session on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics : 2nd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'07), Greece, October 11-12, 2007
News and Events - About
At present, the sharing is done in a ad-hoc manner, leading to specialized formats and incompatible exchange models.
Systems such as NEMS in FAO store and provide possibilities to access this information using RSS feeds. However, the exports are done without using a standard set of elements.
Such a standard would facilitate the efficient exchange of news and more importantly event information, and the creation of better tools to support event management.
News and Events – Our Proposal
In the case of News, we use standard RSS news format. The basic requirements are elements provided by the RSS standard: <link>, <title>, and <description>
In the case of Events, an expanded metadata set was proposed.
RSS feeds that comply with the proposal can be registered at www.agrifeeds.org
Data will be collected by targeting webmasters (CGIAR, GFIS etc.)
News and Events – Tools
The architectural model Shared layer of interoperability Common exchange layer (using common structure and XML format) Value-added Information Services Distributed Datasets Database ... Database Websites Aggregated Database View Subject-specific Portals Open URL or OAI based services Information System (n) Web Services
The Common Exchange Layer Shared layer of interoperability Value-added Information Services Distributed Datasets Database ... Database Websites XML Bus Aggregated Database View Subject-specific Portals Open URL or OAI based services Information System (n) Web Services Metadata ontologies (Application Profiles) Subject ontologies
Some Words on Subject Vocabularies/Ontologies AGROVOC NAL Thesaurus CABI Thesaurus Dedicated KOSs Non-dedicated KOSs e.g., ASFA thesaurus e.g., the Multilingual Forestry Thesaurus e.g., the Sustainable Development website classification e.g., biological taxonomies such as NCBI and ITIS GEMET Other thematic thesauri Existing Thesauri and Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs)
Common concepts are not declared
No or very limited interoperability
Insufficient subject + language coverage
Severe maintenance problems
Very limited machine readability
Only very simple encoding of semantic relations
Investing in AGROVOC
In 2000 AGROVOC was available in 3 languages and mainly used by AGRIS centres
In 2007 AGROVOC is available in 16 languages (and many pipeline projects)
AGROVOC is also basis for many projects related to improving semantics in agricultural information
The mapping between AGROVOC and NAL was done by an EU project of which existence we only got knowledge in the concluding phase
Concept Terms String Concept Relationships between concepts Lexicalization/ Term String Relationships between strings Relationships between terms designated by manifested as Other information: language/culture subvocabulary/scope audience type, etc. annotation relationship Relationship Relationships between Relationships Note
USE/UF Concept c_167 term i_en_ african_buffaloes African buffaloes has_lexicalization Concept c_1040 subclassof Concept c_3182 RTs.... rdfs:label: has_synonym has_translation term i_en_buffaloes_syncerus Buffaloes (syncerus) term i_es_búfalo_africano Búfalo africano term i_zh_ 非洲水牛 非洲水牛 term i_ja_ アフリカ水牛 アフリカ水牛 term i_es_búfalo_syncerus Búfalo (syncerus)
AGROVOC
Agrovoc Conceptserver Workbench: Overall design ipunt AOS/CS Workbench concordance pattern-matching multilingual input .doc, .pdf, .xml, etc. Concept Hierarchy text corpus
SKOS discussions
(Our model too complicated)
Some weeks ago Alistair Miles from W3 working group send out a proposal for Label relations
Fishery Ontology (1)
Ontologies built from existing classifications schemas and thesauri.
Biological species: 44,100
11000 species, 4 langs, taxonomic and ISCAAP codes
The semantic web starts with existing data applications
semantic standards promise to:
be an effective approach to resolving the problems posed by semantic heterogeneity
help users find and discover information efficiently and effectively
The richer the semantics, the greater the possibilities for developing smart applications.
investment in the enhancement of relations between vocabularies, both metadata and domain-specific, yields a relatively large return on investment
not a semantic web, but semantic webspaces for communities of practice
Thank you
Johannes Keizer {Johannes.Keizer@fao.org}
Stefano Anibaldi { Stefano.Anibaldi @fao.org}
Marta Iglesias { Marta . Iglesias @fao.org}
Gudrun Johannsen { Gudrun . Johannsen @fao.org}
Stefka Kaloyanova { Stefka . Kaloyanova @fao.org}
Irene Onyancha {Irene.Onyancha@fao.org}
Gauri Salokhe {Gauri.Salokhe@fao.org}
Margherita Sini { Margherita . Sini @fao.org}
Imma Subirats {Imma.Subirats@fao.org}
and credits to our network of collaborators: Dagobert Soergel, Anita Liang, Boris Lauser, Chang Chun, Asanee Kawtrakul, Caterina Caracciolo, Maria Grazia Bovo, Wang Zhong, Ze Li, Jai Haravu, ARD Prasad, Jayanta Chatterjee, and many others Organizations directly involved: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Wageningen International, Globa Forum on Agricultural Research , Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Hungary Agricultural University,
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