1. Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
The Agricultural Ontology Service:
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
A Proposal to Create a Knowledge Organisation
Framework in the area of Food and Agriculture
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

2. FAO’s interest in Knowledge Management
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • We need to organize our own information
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
production to enhance the productivity of FAO
A Proposal to
Create a officers in the world
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture • We need to make FAO’s information accessible
Slide 2 to Decision Makers and Technical Specialists all
over the world
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN • We need to make all relevant Information
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division sources accessible in the World for our member
countries and FAO officers.

3. The main problems
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Information retrieval is inaccurate and
The Agricultural incomplete.
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
• Little domain interoperability, cross domain
Knowledge
Organisation searching needs high efforts
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
• The work of knowledge organization is done
without coordination and by duplicating efforts
Slide 3
• Machine systems are inefficient or tend to be
Johannes Keizer proprietary or closed in a specific application
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
• The new possibilities of the web and the
UN
Library and
electronic availability of Information Objects are
Documentation
Systems Division not fully exploited

4. The Evolution of Knowledge Management
Workshop
Pre-Web Web Semantic Web
Oxford
24-01-2001
Human indexing and document annotating Machine indexing and document
The Agricultural annotating
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a Card and computer Web catalogues on the Machine readable
Knowledge catalogues templates of traditional catalogs metadata (RDF)
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Human reading, checking Full Text Search engines Full Text Search engines
and ordering (Statistical text analysis) (Semantic text analysis)
Slide 4
Implicit knowledge based Formal Knowledge based
web portals web portals
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture Text Mining by Robots
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division
Thesauri, Classification Schemes,
Glossaries, Keyword Lists, Ontologies

5. What is an Ontology?
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • It is a buzz word, but also something very simple
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: • Everyone creates “Ontologies”
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
• A directory structure on a hard disk is an
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
ontology
Agriculture
• A personal agenda is an ontology
Slide 5
• A bibliographical catalogue is an ontology
Johannes Keizer
Food and
But:
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
• Humans might survive without ontologies, but
Library and
Documentation humans have intuition
Systems Division
• Machine have no intuition
• Machine need formal information

6. Do we need Ontologies?
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • An ontology is a formal knowledge organization
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
(representation system).
• It contains concepts
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the • Information about these concepts
Area of Food and
Agriculture
• Relations between these concepts
Slide 6
• and instances,
Johannes Keizer
Food and
• And it contains information about the relations
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
between instances and concepts
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

7. Defining relations in an ontology- Important relationships that
should be introduced in the AOS
Workshop
Oxford Classification Relations--class-subclass relations.
24-01-2001
Meronymic Relations--used to describe part-of
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: relationships.
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge Temporal Relations--define the time interval and time point
Organisation
Framework in the aspects of an ontology.
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Spatial Relations--used to describe space relationships
Slide 7 between objects.
Johannes Keizer
 Influence Relations--expresses an impact or effect one
Food and object has on another.
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN Dependency Relations--describes an objects dependency
Library and
Documentation on another.
Systems Division
Case Relations--provides ability to express a knowledge
structure without which the relation cannot exist.

8. Sample ontology for crop pest management
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Slide 8
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

9. In which areas Ontologies can help (1)
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Teaching machines to have some
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
intelligence
Create a
Knowledge  Automatic indexing and text annotation tools
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
 Better machine translation
Agriculture
 Text Mining on the Web (meaning-oriented
Slide 9 access)
Johannes Keizer  Full text search engines that create meaningful
Food and
Agriculture classification (FAO-Schwartz not related to FAO)
(semantic clustering)
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

10. In which areas Ontologies can help (2)
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
• Better structure and organization of
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
knowledge on the web
Knowledge
Organisation  Knowledge maps
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
 Guided discovery of knowledge
Slide 10  Easy retrievability of information without using
complicated Boolean logic
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

11. Applications of ontologies
Workshop
Oxford 1. To build dynamic taxonomies (ordered
24-01-2001 classification) through automatic classification
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
operation
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge eg. Crop
Organisation
Framework in the agronomic crop
Area of Food and
Agriculture peanuts
cotton
Slide 11
fruit crop
Johannes Keizer vegetable crop
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN 2. Support for Natural Language Processing through
Library and
Documentation concept matching and query processing
Systems Division
•locate a concept based on a description
•find other similar objects in the ontology

12. Information Management tasks that can be performed using an
ontology
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: 3. To aid information retrieval through automatic
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
document clustering
Organisation
Framework in the ....closely associated documents tend to be relevant to the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
same requests
Slide 12
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

13. Steps in using ontology for Natural Language
Processing- a simplified view
Workshop
Oxford
1.Expressing information needs using natural
24-01-2001
languages
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: Example: what insects damage soybean
A Proposal to
Create a leaves?
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
2. Finding the concept in the ontology
Area of Food and
Agriculture Insect Damage Soybean leaves
Slide 13 3. Analysing the grammatical pattern with in the stated
sentence (syntactic analysis)
Johannes Keizer
Food and 4. Mapping the grammatical structure into objects in the
Agriculture
Organization of the ontology (semantic analysis)
UN
Library and
Documentation 5. Drawing inferences between the user’s query and
Systems Division
objects in the database
6. Displaying the results to the user

14. AOS: Possible Use... (1)
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural Records found: 5
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to 1. xxxxxxxxxxx
Create a
Knowledge 2. xxxxxxxxxxx
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
3. xxxxxxxxxxx
Agriculture
4. xxxxxxxxxxx
What would you like to view?
Slide 14 5. xxxxxxxxxxx
Forest rights issues
Johannes Keizer
You may also be interested in... Parasites of forests
Food and Biotopes Pesticides used in forests
Agriculture
Organization of the Cropping systems using forests x Types of forest products
UN Economics of forest production Uses of forest products
Library and Forestry equipment
Documentation
Soil science You can further limit by:
Systems Division
Geographic area Africa
Type of resource Web page

15. AOS: Possible Use... (2)
Workshop
Use your right mouse button to learn more about an italicized word on the Agricultural Web Page
Oxford page.
24-01-2001 Biosecurity:
Conservation agriculture
management of all
The Agricultural Farmers like it because it gives them a means of conserving,
Ontology Service: improving and making more efficient use of their natural resources
biological
A Proposal to and environmental risks
Create a About camels and llamas
Knowledge
associated with food and
Organisation Descendants of the same rabbit-sized mammal, they have become agriculture, including
Framework in the two of humanity's most versatile domestic animals forestry
Area of Food and
Agriculture Agribusiness and small farmers and fisheries
Well managed contract farming contributes to both increased
Slide 15 income for producers and higher profits for investors See also:
Toward biosecurity
Biosafety
Food Safety
Johannes Keizer Biological and environmental risks associated with food and
agriculture have intensified with economic globalization
Risk Management
Food and
Agriculture
Urban food marketing
Organization of the
UN
Or are you interested
Library and
In the “century of cities”, a major challenge will be providing in...:
adequate quantities of nutritional and affordable food for urban Food Security
Documentation
Systems Division inhabitants
Biological Diversity
Crop science and ethics
In order to continue their contribution to human development, crop
scientists must regain credibility

16. What is the starting point?
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • FAO maintains the multilingual thesaurus
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
AGROVOC since the early 80s
• Other consistent thesauri are maintained by
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
CABI in England and the National Agricultural
Area of Food and
Agriculture Library in the States
Slide 16 • Various other knowledge organization systems
Johannes Keizer
are scattered around the world
Food and
Agriculture • The existing systems are language biased with
Organization of the
UN
Library and
English as the leading language
Documentation
Systems Division • None of the systems is satisfactory for resource
description and discovery purposes

17. Thesauri Contain Knowledge
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Thesauri were mostly used only for indexing and
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: to help users in searching
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge • But thesauri are already knowledge organization
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
systems
Agriculture
• Not only the vocabulary of concepts, but also the
Slide 17
defined relations (BT, NT, RT, UF …) contain
Johannes Keizer
Food and
domain knowledge
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN • To leverage this knowledge in the context of
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division
Web technologies we need to develop them
further

18. The Origin of the AOS - Project
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Born as the AGROVOC Taxonomy Server
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: • Agronomists were upset with the word taxonomy
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
• IT people were upset about the word server
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
• After XML2000 the word ontology started to
Agriculture
become sexy... And fundable
Slide 18
• Now we are in the phase to define the project
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

19. Why an Agricultural Ontology Service (1)
Workshop
Oxford
Existing Thesauri and Knowledge Dedicated KOSs
24-01-2001 Organization Systems (KOSs)
e.g., ASFA thesaurus
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: e.g., the Multilingual
A Proposal to Forestry Thesaurus
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
e.g., the Sustainable
Framework in the Development
Area of Food and website classification
Agriculture
e.g., biological taxonomies such
Slide 19 as NCBI and ITIS
Other thematic thesauri
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the Non-dedicated KOSs
UN
Library and CABI Thesaurus
Documentation
Systems Division AGROVOC
NAL Thesaurus
GEMET

20. Why an Agricultural Ontology Service (2)
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • FAO can be a neutral point of co-ordination
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: • Central access-point to domain knowledge
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
• Re-usability of domain knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
• Involvement of a high number of subject
Agriculture
specialists
Slide 20
• Clear and distributed responsibilities for
Johannes Keizer maintenance
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the • Federation of Institutions to manage this service
UN
Library and
Documentation
• Possibility of business plan to assure
Systems Division
sustainability

21. AOS: A reference point on the web
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Attributes Concept
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Definitions
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Labels
Slide 21
URI, e.g., www.agri-ontology.org/2050.xml
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Relations
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation Responsible Party
Systems Division
??????

22. An architecture for federated AOS
Workshop
Oxford
OneFish Portal
24-01-2001 Forestry Portal Crop Portal
(application on
(application on (application on
The Agricultural merged ontology)
Ontology Service: merged ontology) merged ontology)
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the Merged Ontology- THE AOS
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Slide 22 Normalised Ontology Normalised Ontology
Johannes Keizer Common data
Food and model for
Agriculture local ontologies
Organization of the
Local Ontology
UN Local Ontology
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division
System 1 System 2
Ontology
+ Ontology
metadata repository +
metadata repository

23. AOS: Possible Use... (3)
Workshop
Create your own ontologies using the AOS
Oxford
24-01-2001
The AOS provides the necessary building blocks to create your own ontologies.
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
Follow the following simple steps to create your ontology instantly.
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge Forest BioSecurit
Organisation Domain Crops Others
ry y Food
Framework in the
Area of Food and Fisher Livestoc &
Agriculture $ $
y k Nutriti
on
Slide 23
FAO $ CABI $ NAL $ Other
Authority
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Ontology Concept Level Type of Relationships
Organization of the Content &
UN
Library and Structure
Documentation
Systems Division
Language DAML+OIL RDF XTM ASCII
Representation
Get me the ontology Cancel the Selection

24. AOS: Iterative Knowledge Registration
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
KOS Components: terms,
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
KOS uses partner definitions,
A Proposal to
Create a components to build relationships
Knowledge an application
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
KOS Agricultural Ontology
Slide 24
application Service (AOS)
Federated storage and
Johannes Keizer
description facility
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the Users search and browse Components:
UN application using KOS terms,
Library and
Documentation
components partner definitions,
Systems Division relationships
User feedback
Discussions and choices
for amendments to
components

25. AOS: where we are
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • The concept note has found interest in the domain area --
comments are mostly encouraging from all subject specialists,
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: ontology developers and users
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge • A Launch Group has been established at the first
Organisation
Framework in the workshop. The Launch Group is in charge to write a
Area of Food and
Agriculture definite project proposal and to define the possible
collaborations and the necessary management structures
Slide 25
of the project
Johannes Keizer
Food and
• A proposal for a fundable project (6th framework) should
Agriculture
Organization of the be written
UN
Library and
Documentation
• Partnership of the most important stakeholders must be
Systems Division
established
• Pilot projects are ongoing

26. Information and Contacts
Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Ontology Service: http://www.fao.org/agris/aos
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
johannes.keizer@fao.org
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture frehiwot.fisseha@fao.org
Slide 26
J.Brooks@cabi.org
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division

27. Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Possibility of mapping to register quicker and to accept
The Agricultural
different terminology
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to • How can local content made available
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
• We need examples about searches, at it is now and as it
Framework in the
Area of Food and
would be with the AOS.
Agriculture
• The usage slides have to be integrated
Slide 27 • Introduction of terminology precision…..
Johannes Keizer
• Microsoft for funding
Food and
Agriculture
• Worldbank funding??
Organization of the
UN • We need to do something (once, well, together)
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division
• Importance of bibliographical databases: there is a kind of
illiteracy between undergraduates who do not consider
material that is not online available.

28. Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Slide 28
•Informatio
n •Information
•AOS Managers •enduser
Johannes Keizer
• Services
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
•Search engines
Library and •Services
Documentation •Portals
Systems Division •Provide Ontology •Topic maps
•Input Ontology •Catalogues

29. Workshop
Oxford
24-01-2001 • Prototype Searchengine, that searches the web
The Agricultural
Ontology Service:
in arabic or chineses, using agrovoc
A Proposal to
Create a
Knowledge
Organisation
Framework in the
Area of Food and
Agriculture
Slide 29
Johannes Keizer
Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
UN
Library and
Documentation
Systems Division