Earth and Space Sciences Ontology Workshop

Organizing Committee
Michele Weiss, JHU/APL, Laurel, MD michele.weiss@jhuapl.edu
Peter Fox, High Altitude Observatory, ESSL/NCAR, Boulder, CO pfox@ucar.edu
Deborah McGuinness, Knowledge Systems, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA dlm@cs.stanford.edu

Date: Friday, May 26, 2006 at JHU/APL

Workshop Description:

Knowledge representation and reasoning research focuses on providing the foundation for encoding precise semantics for terms. An ontology is just such a collection of formal term definitions and term inter-relationships. Knowledge representation languages and ontologies are providing the formal foundation for encoding the semantics in the semantic web and the semantic grid. Earth and Space Science is well positioned to benefit from progress in the areas of the Semantic Web and the Semantic Grid. These areas rely on machine interpretable encodings of semantics or meaning. Once formal encoding of meaning exists, science applications may begin to interoperate.

Ontologies are receiving increased attention in the fields of Earth and Space Sciences and some significant development efforts and production applications are starting to appear. Often, terms and definitions differ across disciplines with different disciplines using identical terms with different meanings. Ontologies provide one way to provide a semantic repository of Earth and Space Science terms where the terms and their inter-relationships may be precisely defined. Such repositories can be used to articulate and relate the different notions in various discipline-specific and interdisciplinary data systems and Virtual Observatories by explicitly specifying the meaning of and relation between fundamental concepts. The use of formal ontologies has many advantages. It allows for an unambiguous specification of the structure of knowledge in a domain, enables knowledge sharing and, as a result, makes it possible to perform automated reasoning over data using terms in the ontologies.

Workshop Goals:

This workshop was aimed at both existing projects and science communities and agencies that stand ready to utilize semantic concepts and technologies to meet the challenging explosion of data from instruments and models occurring right now. The goal was to bring together the growing Science Ontology community, encouraging interaction and collaboration with a forum for result dissemination and brainstorming about emerging research projects.

Workshop participants had the opportunity to learn:

What ontologies are (in simple terms): Why to develop one, how to use one, how to build one and how example applications use them
An indication of how knowledge representation technologies can change the way our communities develop interdisciplinary and diverse science applications
Ways in which these changes can enable new science
An opportunity to clarify how knowledge representation can help educators

Agenda:

Time	Presentation
8:00 - 8:15	Introductions and Logistics
8:15 - 9:00	Why should Earth and Space Scientists Care About Ontologies presented by Krishna Sinha
9:00 - 9:45	Ontologies in Practice - a Solar Terrestrial Example presented by Peter Fox
9:45 - 10:30	What is the Semantic Web? 8 Perspectives With Simple Examples presented by Deborah McGuinness
10:30 - 10:45	Break
10:45 - 11:30	The Design of SWEET - an Upper-Level Ontology for Earth System Science presented by Robert Raskin
11:30 - 12:00	Geospatial Ontologies & Locating the Semantic Web presented by Joshua Lieberman
12:00 - 12:30	Open Discussion
12:30 - 1:30	Lunch on Your Own
1:30 - 2:00	Beyond Semantics to Geo-Pragmatics presented by Boyan Brodaric
2:00 - 2:30	Tools - Developing Applications, Publishing Ontologies, Linking Ontologies
2:30 - 3:30	Assessment of Current Approaches - Interactive case studies of conceptual models from existing systems
3:30 - 4:30	Ontology demos - Poster session enabling ontology users to provide demos of what they are doing. Ontology experts will circulate and provide guidance
4:30 - 5:30	Panel - Ask the experts: where you can ask your ontology questions to the panel

This workshop was aimed at both existing projects and science communities and agencies that stand ready to utilize semantic concepts and technologies to meet the challenging explosion of data from instruments and models occurring right now. The goal was to bring together the growing Science Ontology community, encouraging interaction and collaboration with a forum result dissemination and brainstorming about emerging research projects. The following jpeg files are whiteboard captures of the resulting brainstorming session: