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Ontolog Forum

EarthScienceOntolog: Getting Organized

This is a scratch workspace for the organization, coordination and planning of the Joint EarthCube-Ontolog Mini-series.

Theme: "Ontology and Semantic Technology for the Earth Science Community"

EarthScienceOntolog Organizing Committee Meetings

  • Founding meeting - ConferenceCall_2012_06_21
  • 2nd organizing committee call - 2012.08.03
  • 3rd organizing committee call - 2012.10.19

Candidate Session Schedule & Program

Input: PeterYim/2012.07.17; DaliaVaranka/2012.07.18; Naicong Li; Leo Obrst; GaryBergCross; Krishna Sinha; ...

  • Session-1: Thu 2012_08_23 - co-chairs: Krishna Sinha & Leo Obrst - "Value Proposition of Ontology and Semantic Technology for the Earth Science Community"
    • 1-content: 1) Value Proposition of Ontology and Semantic Technology for the Earth Science Community (Value propositions - needs, criteria, use case scenarios, benefits, etc.)
    • Leo Obrst: some initial thoughts - At our first planning session, Krishna thought it very important that the Geo-Science community and the Ontology / Semantics community come together and begin to understand each other better. So this first session could probably have some geo-scientists discussing needs, use cases, etc., from their perspective, i.e., what are the problems facing the Geo-Science community, e.g., data access and discovery issues, impeding terminology differences, changing collaboration models, etc. Then some ontologists / semantic technologists could respond to those issues and offer what they see as the value proposition to Geo-Science. This kind of discussion (joined in by the session participants in Q&A and in chat) could lay the foundation for the remaining sessions, give us all some initial common understanding.
  • Session-2: Thu 2012_09_06 - co-chairs: GaryBergCross & Naicong Li - "Ontology development and application across Earth Science Lifecycle"
    • 2-content: Ontology development and application across Earth Science Lifecycle (Existing successful applications, perhaps as case studies)
    • Gary Berg-Cross proposes that the 2nd session follow the session on Earth and Geo scientists needs with a session that covers these needs with State of the Art work across the Earth Sciences Lifecycle: This would continue the Earth Science and Ontology discussions with presentations (possibly a panel discussion at the end) on existing successful applications supporting various stages of the lifecycle. If possible these should include current or recent past collaborative efforts between the 2 discipline areas such as the NeON project which included work on Ontology-driven fish stock depletion assessment system. This "case study led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), to test how semantically-oriented technologies supported by Neon help address the information silo problem in the area of fisheries. This case study has produced a network of populated fisheries ontologies, and a prototype software that uses that network as a showcase of the possibilities of Neon technologies. "
    • GaryBergCross / 2012.08.14 - Here is an update on current activities and organization for for Session 2 of Mini-series:
      • 1. Overview and Into Gary Berg-Cross lays out rationale and goals for session
      • 2. Representative from NSF Interoperability Concept Award Group on Use Case for Demonstrating Earth Cube lifecycle (coordinating with Ilya Zaslavsky @ UCSD) on presentation
      • 3. Peter Fox (contacted and considering talking on Semantics for the Earth Cube Lifecycle)
      • 4. Representative of Stefano Nativi group at National Research Council (CNR), Italy will talk on semantic vocabulary approaches, semantic services and semantic broker tools for Augmented Discovery of Geospatial Resources
      • 5. Naicong Li - Spatial Decision Support (SDS) ontology and application - a case study illustrating the use of ontologies to organize resources (data, models and tools, cases studies), to facilitate resource discovery and access, as well as for formalizing the content of a knowledge domain)
  • Session-3: Thu 2012_10_11 - co-chairs: Krzysztof Janowicz & Pascal Hitzler - "Heterogeneity-preserving Data Interoperability: Methods and Challenges"
    • 3-content: Methodologies: including, what *is* semantics, image approaches, etc.
    • Krzysztof Janowicz / 2012.08.13: Pascal Hitzler and I decided to go with the following title for our session 'Heterogeneity-preserving Data Interoperability: Methods and Challenges'. We are still discussing the panelists/presenters but WernerKuhn, Giancarlo Guizzardi, MarkGahegan, and others come to mind. The problem is not to find good names but the right combination of covered topics. For instance, we would still like to have somebody present work on alignment. More updates soon.
    • Krzysztof Janowicz / 2012.08.30: So far we have confirmations from the following speakers: Dr. Simon Scheider, University of Muenster, Germany, Dr. Prateek Jain, Knoesis, Wright State University, and Ben Adams, University of California, Santa Barbara. We are still trying to contact GiancarloGuizzardi.
  • Session-4: Thu 2012_11_08 - co-chairs: Dalia Varanka & Mark Schildhauer - " ??? "
    • 4-content: Review of the field of ontologies for earth science (and existing ontologies)
    • Dalia Varanka / 2012.08.15 - I have not finalized the title and session description yet, but I have been researching potential speakers. ... Luis Bermudez accepted my/our invitation. He and I will continue to work on a topic as the sessions evolve, so there is no title yet. ... I am looking within our very own Earth Cube Semantic Web community and in ESIP. I postponed IGARSS as a source for now, because NSF funds US projects, so perhaps I'm wrong to do this, but I want to invite US scientists first. Science of course knows no boundaries (we hope), so I have not excluded my interest in IGARSS, just put it on the back burner. ... I would like to contact Dawn Wright, an oceanographer and earth scientist who is a member of EarthCube. Dawn is a professor of geosciences at Oregon State, but on detail as chief scientist at ESRI (Dawn works in ontology and is a member of our Earth Cube group). With so many legacy GIS systems around, I think she would have great insight on the move from GIS to applied ontology and semantic systems.
    • Dalia Varanka / Mark Schildhauer (at the 2012.10.19 org meeting) - the session-4 panelists/briefings line-up is now: Luis Bermudez, Boyan Brodaric, Norman Morrison, Thomas Huang (SWEET) (to be confirmed), Mark Schildhauer (on joint work by Ben Adams & MarkSchildhauer) (3GDQ)

.

Collected Ideas

Goals, objectives, expectations - various ideas about the mini-series that have been floated during the 2012_06_21 meeting and the email exchange preceding that - ref.

  • Krishna Sinha: we need to reach out to the Geo Science community - where is the common theme that both the Geo Science community and the Ontology and Semantic Technology community can address together and start developing potential partnerships. Effectively, what can Ontology do for the Geo Scientists? From my perspective, we have to debate two things: (i) the enumeration of existing ontologies applicable to geo science, and (ii) how do we evaluate these existing ontologies.
  • GaryBergCross: Two goals I would suggest for the series is to clarify the issues and help formulate early steps to help manage overall risk ... and possibly even to EXPAND the community of semantic researchers and ontologists that participate in the Earth Cube discussion.
  • Naicong Li: One of the Earth Cube initiatives is to facilitate sharing of resources such as data, models and tools. Ontologies can help address the need of resource organization, discovery and access, interoperability among the resources. This could be one of the themes in the mini series.
  • Krishna Sinha: totally agree ... possibly investigating or demonstrating how semantics could make it very easy to share data, and allowing downstream activities easy to implement. We want to identify semantic capabilities for geoscientists.
  • GaryBergCross: I think that we should have a mini series (4-5 sessions) like you did for SemanticWiki from Nov 2011 to March 2012.
  • GaryBergCross: I would go beyond Krishna Sinha 2 areas or say that they can be addressed within a series that includes a discussion of issues such as methodologies that would provide benefits.
  • GaryBergCross: we probably want to help earth scientists better understand what "semantics" is - we need time to explicate it and this takes more time than what the Earth Cube charrette allowed (e.g. explaining what it takes to develop an adequate vocabulary for a domain science).
  • Pascal Hitzler: assuming EarthCube'rs who are looking for further insights into semantic technologies are the target audience, then we could be looking at a set of tutorials
  • Krzysztof Janowicz: [consensus] First session August 9th, 2012 on the value proposition of semantics for the Earth Cube community (highlighting the immediate added value without technical detail or technical language.)
  • Peter P. Yim: we should also try to differentiate this activity from, say, nominal Earth Cube "Semantics and Ontologies" working group activities ... and capitalize on what the Ontolog community or infrastructure can provide, that would bring value to this collaboration.

More ideas and suggestions

... (please provide bullets below; sign and date each input.)

  • [PeterYim / 2012.07.10] - we need a short (say, a couple of paragraphs) description for this, where we would lay out our "Objectives and Goals" for the mini-series.
  • [PeterYim / 2012.07.10] - Going forward from here - the suggestion (by Gary) of having 4 to 5 sessions in the mini-series sounds good
    • timing is almost perfect - if we do one session per month (near the beginning of each month), Aug-2012 thru Dec-2012 will give us time for 5 sessions (and then Ontolog will get into their very busy "OntologySummit" season, which will capture almost everyone's energy and imagination for the next 4~5 months.
    • we probably want to lay out the topic for each of the remaining 4 session (we've already got the first session topic, the one scheduled for Aug-9)
    • we have about 10 people in the organizing committee ... so, we might want to pair up, so that each two-person team will champion one of the sessions.
  • [DaliaVaranka /2012.07.18] - One of the missing links (to close the gap on topics suggested above) is: "Needs and criteria for earth science semantic systems"
  • [KrzysztofJanowicz /2012.07.19] - I could organize a session on semantic interoperability and semantic heterogeneity.
    • [PascalHitzler / 2012.07.27] - confirm that I would be happy to co-chair.
  • ...

EarthScienceOntolog Mini-series 2nd Organizing Committee conference call - Fri 2012.08.03

Conference call details:

  • Add your Agenda Ideas and anything you want discussed at this meeting below:
    • to adopt our mini-series "Mission"
    • to adopt our mini-series "Program"
    • clarify and identify all co-chair roles
    • share thoughts and coordinate session content and panelists invitations.
    • streamlining the organizing committee (so we have people who can really dedicate the time and effort); anyone else we should bring in?
    • more "co-organizers" and "supporting communities" (before we close this off?)
    • Any other business

Agenda & Proceedings

[ Audio Archive of the meeting ] ( 1:00:36 ; mp3 ; 6.94 MB)

[ chat-transcript ]

  • Urgent Outstanding Items
    • ... none!

Main Discussion Items

  • 2. to adopt our mini-series "Program"
    • Mini-series program and co-chairs confirmed - see below
  • 3. clarify and identify all co-chair roles
  • 4. share thoughts and coordinate session content and panelists invitations
  • 5. streamlining the organizing committee (so we have people who can really dedicate the time and effort); anyone else we should bring in?
  • 6. ... more "co-organizers" and "supporting communities"? (before we close this off?)
  • 7. Any other business

Confirmed Mini-series Program and Session Co-chairs

ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EarthScienceOntolog#nid3CWB

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

[10:56] Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the

EarthScienceOntolog mini-series - 2nd Organizing Committee Meeting

Date: Friday 2012.08.03

Start time: 2:00pm EDT /11:00am PDT

Duration: ~1.0 hr (augmented telecon)

Agenda & Proceedings:

[10:59] Peter P. Yim:

1. to adopt our mini-series "Mission" (3DGQ)

2. to adopt our mini-series "Program" (3DGR)

3. clarify and identify all co-chair roles (3DGS)

4. share thoughts and coordinate session content and panelists invitations. (3DGT)

5. streamlining the organizing committee (so we have people who can really dedicate the time and effort);

anyone else we should bring in? (3DGU)

6. more "co-organizers" and "supporting communities" (before we close this off?) (3DGV)

7. Any other business (3DGW)

[11:03] anonymous morphed into Krishna Sinha

[11:04] anonymous morphed into Krzysztof Janowicz

[11:05] anonymous morphed into GaryBergCross

[11:06] Peter P. Yim: -- session starts: 11:06am PDT --

[11:09] Peter P. Yim: Krishna announced an input from the NSF program coordinator, Barbara Ransom,

ref. funding of the 6 Geoscience-oriented workshops, which he will forward to everyone shortly

[11:12] Krishna Sinha: here's what Barbara sent over ...

//

We are in the process of funding 7 Geo end-user workshops here in our 2012 fiscal year and there will likely

be 10 or more that will follow in our next FY which starts October 1. Prior to the June meeting, many of you

expressed a desire to have direct input from geoscience end users to help progress your activities.

Our geo end-user workshops will provide captive audiences who will be able to provide you with the information

you need; and we would be happy to make sure you get the information you want, in the appropriate format.

The present slate of funded, or soon to be funded workshops to be held before the end of 2012 are:

1. An early career workshop on sedimentary systems and landscape dynamics

2. An early career workshop that cut across all of the geosciences and cyber/computer science

(this grew out of meetings with the early career people who came to the June meeting)

3. A workshop for EarthScope PIs that involves geophysicists as well as sedimentary/crustal geoscientists

4. A workshop involving the hydrological sciences community and sponsored by CUAHSI

5. A workshop for critical zone (soil) scientists

6. A workshop for paleobiologists and sedimentologists

7. A workshop focused on the need of geoscientists in tectonics, structure, and geochronology

//

[11:15] Krzysztof Janowicz: Who will be invited to these workshops and where to find information about them?

[11:18] Peter P. Yim: Nancy Wiegand joins ... (no computer access though)

[11:38] anonymous1 morphed into Naicong Li

[11:19] Peter P. Yim: Naicong Li joins

[11:20] Peter P. Yim: [consensus] ALL: "Mission Statement" - ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EarthScienceOntolog#nid3CWC - adopted

[11:22] Krishna Sinha: suggesting candidate panelist: Boyan Brodaric, Geological Survey of Canada

... and Calvin Barnes, Texas Tech

[11:22] Krishna & Leo: we are pushing the kick-off session date out to either Aug-16 or Aug-23

[11:24] Peter P. Yim: [confirmed] session-1 date now changed to Aug-23

[11:26] Peter P. Yim: [consensus] ALL: the rest of the proposed dates for sessions 2 to 5 confirmed

[11:27] Peter P. Yim: see session schedule and co-chairs at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EarthScienceOntolog#nid3CWI

[11:26] GaryBergCross: We don't know when the NSF workshops might be , so we may run into conflicts despite our best efforts.

[11:43] Peter P. Yim: besides suggested session guidelines - ref. discussion thread starting at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/mini-series-org/2012-08/msg00009.html

- we should all leave 30~45 minutes for discussion at each session

[11:43] GaryBergCross: Let's be opportunistic and flexible. Plan what we can and get buy in from earth

scientists early on and find a space to get them involved also later in sessions like on methodology.

[11:44] GaryBergCross: We should leave space in each session, say 30 minutes, for open discussion.

But also if earth scientists are heavily involved early on make sure we let ontologists and LoP folks

the chance to respond before the end of the series.

[11:46] Krishna: [action] I will post a link to the EarthScienceOntolog mini-series at the Earth Cube Semantics website

[11:47] == more suggestions on content / panelists ...

[11:48] Dalia Varanka suggested candidate presenters for the Tutorial session might include: Leo Obrst, James Wilson and herself.

[11:48] Krzysztof Janowicz: Glen Hart ordnance survey

[11:48] anonymous: Marine Science and Interoperability Center, SDSC have cataloged a lot of ontologies relevant to earth science

[11:48] Krzysztof Janowicz: Todd Pehle, Orbis

[11:48] Dalia Varanka: For the tutorial group, we could ask the IAOA summer school on ontological analysis to

speak about the summer school outcomes, plans, and support for earth science. The IAOA has a GeoSemantics SIG,

led by WernerKuhn and John Bateman, and they could be ontologist partners.

[11:48] Peter P. Yim: indeed, IAOA (and their GeoSemantics SIG) has already agreed to get involved in this effort

and they are listed this mini-series as an "IAOA Supported Event"

[11:49] Krzysztof Janowicz: ESIP - Peter Fox (RPI Tetherless World Constellation)

[11:49] GaryBergCross: community voc data models include GeoSciML, ClimateML, SoilML,

[11:51] Krzysztof Janowicz: Michael Lutz and Sven Schade from INSPIRE

[11:52] GaryBergCross: Luis Bermudez at OGC has had connections to MMI and I can check with him.

[11:52] Dalia Varanka: For session 4: Ask Mark Schildhauer to co-chair; invite ESIP, some scientists from IGARSS. I would be happy to switch to session 4.

[11:53] GaryBergCross: HydroCatalog is part of CUAHSI and has Voc. Nogueras-Iso is one contact on INSPIRE

[11:55] GaryBergCross: Janet Fredericks is also involved with MMI and was at the EC Charrette.

[12:02] Dalia Varanka: Dave Kolas (BBN) replied that he may be interested - very taken up with a new daughter right now

- but he would be a wonderful resource for a GeoSPARQL tutorial, which is extremely important to geospatial ontology.

[11:56] Krzysztof Janowicz: I have to leave now

[11:57] Dalia Varanka: bye

[11:57] GaryBergCross: MMI list of vocabularies at https://marinemetadata.org/conventions/vocabularies

[12:00] Peter P. Yim: [confirmed] co-chair for session-4 will now be Dalia Varanka & Mark Schildhauer

(Dalia is contacting Mark to get his confirmation)

[12:02] Peter P. Yim: co-chairs for session-5 will be Nancy Wiegand and Mike Dean (tentative .. will confirm with Mike)

[12:06] Peter P. Yim: let's make sure we engage earth scientists as much as we can; we need to try, possibly with

NSF's help, to engage each and every one of the principals driving the upcoming seven (or so) Geo end-user workshops

[12:07] Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 12:06pm PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

--

notes taken by: Peter P. Yim / 2012.08.03-12:06pm PDT

All participants, please review and edit to enhance accuracy and granularity of the documented proceedings.

EarthScienceOntolog Mini-series 3rd Organizing Committee conference call - Fri 2012.10.19

Conference call details:

  • Add your Agenda Ideas and anything you want discussed at this meeting below:
    • quick progress check:
      • how are we doing so far
      • what worked real well
      • what needs improving
      • what do we want to see done in the remaining 2 sessions
    • share thoughts and coordinate session content and panelists invitations for the remaining sessions (4 & 5)
    • finalize session-4 plans (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/mini-series-org/2012-10/msg00012.html)
    • what follows? ... after all 5 sessions
    • Any other business

Agenda & Proceedings

[ Archive of the meeting ] ( 1:11:57 ; mp3 ; 8.24 MB)

[ chat-transcript ]

  • Urgent Outstanding Items
    • ... none!

Main Discussion Items

1. quick progress check

  • how are we doing so far?
  • what worked real well?
  • what needs improving?
  • what do we want to see done/happen in the remaining 2 sessions?

2. share thoughts and coordinate session content and panelists invitations for the remaining sessions (4 & 5)

see: chat transcript below.

3. finalize session-4 plans

The session-4 panelists/briefings line-up is now: Luis Bermudez, Boyan Brodaric, Norman Morrison, Thomas Huang (on SWEET) (to be confirmed), Mark Schildhauer (on joint work by Ben Adams & MarkSchildhauer)

4. what follows? ... after all 5 sessions

... thoughts? ... discussion

  • we will carve out the final speaking slot on session-5 for Krishna Sinha and Leo to do a conclusion/next-steps piece. [attn: Nancy Wiegand & MikeDean]
  • Krishna Sinha will also invite NSF folks (Barbara Ransom or Clifford Jacobs) to do a 5 minutes within that wrap-up as well. [action: KrishnaSinha]

5. Any other business

  • Session-5, originally scheduled for 6-Dec-2012, is in conflict with the upcoming American Geophysical Union's AGU Fall Meeting (San Francisco, 3~7 Dec 2012), which happens to be on Dec 3~7 ... we will notify the session-5 co-chairs so they can come up with an alternate date for the [attn: Nancy Wiegand & MikeDean]

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

[10:08] Peter P. Yim: Let's start

[10:17] Dalia Varanka: I just sent a message to Thomas Huang to speak during the 4th session.

[10:19] Leo Obrst: Starting, rejoining, was in transit.

[10:19] Peter P. Yim: good timing to start a "preparation" mail thread that includes the co-chairs and

all panelists and copied to the [mini-series-org] list, to get everyone coordinated

[10:21] Peter P. Yim: attendees: Dalia Varanka, Leo Obrst, Mark Schildhauer, Peter P. Yim, Krishna Sinha, GaryBergCross,

[10:20] Krishna Sinha: we might also want to give consideration to AGI Atmospheric and Marine Science too

[10:21] Mark Schildhauer: http://www.agiweb.org/georef/about/thesaurus.html

[10:24] anonymous morphed into GaryBergCross

23


[10:32] Peter P. Yim: KrishnaSinha's uploaded jpeg image is now accessible as: KrishnaSinha_ESontolog-org_Foundation-Ontology-20120627_20121019.jpg

[10:35] GaryBergCross: Boyan Brodaric can also address some of this issue for geology and geo-science.

[10:37] Mark: let's stay focused on the session-4 theme: Review of the field of ontologies for earth science

(and existing ontologies)

[10:40] Dalia / Mark: the session-4 panelists/briefings line-up is now: Luis Bermudez, Boyan Brodaric, Norman Morrison, ThomasHuang? (SWEET), Mark Schildhauer (on joint work by Ben Adams & MarkSchildhauer)

[10:47] Peter P. Yim: @Mark & Dalia: please have your panelists read over the page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?VirtualSpeakerSessionTips

... especially the section "For the SPEAKERS"

[10:49] Peter P. Yim: Again, please refer to logistic details at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/mini-series-org/2012-08/msg00026.html#nid04 and http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/mini-series-org/2012-08/msg00037.html#nid03

[10:51] Peter P. Yim: the developing session page will be at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_11_01

... that will (eventually) be the one-stop place to visit for session-4 (for everyone, co-chairs, panelists, and participants alike)

34


[10:56] Peter P. Yim: this next jpeg from Krishna Sinha is now accessible as: KrishnaSinha_ESontolog-org_Plate-tectonics-20120627_20121019.jpg

[10:52] Krishna Sinha: within solid earthscience domain...this is one of the conceptual frameworks

(its been published) captures a lot of other ontologies

[11:02] Peter P. Yim: == 4. what follows? ... after all 5 sessions

[11:10] Krishna: discussion among NSF - Earth Cube has a social component, engineering component and science component

[11:13] Peter P. Yim: [consensus] we will carve out the final speaking slot on session-5 for Krishna Sinha and

Leo to do a conclusion/next-steps piece. Krishna Sinha will also invite NSF folks (Barbara Ransom or

Clifford Jacobs) to do a 5 minutes within that wrap-up as well

[11:14] GaryBergCross: Krishna Sinha What is the next workshop that you know is planned? I can't keep up

with this and am not sure I am hearing enough of what is going on.

[11:16] GaryBergCross: Our 3rd session covered heterogeneity so perhaps we can put some write ups from that

on the Ning site.

[11:16] GaryBergCross: We may need a session after 5 on light wt methods. Maybe session 5 could start on that aspect.

[11:18] Krishna: the session-5 Dec-6 date may be in conflict with the upcoming AGU meeting. Let's make sure.

[11:19] GaryBergCross: American geophysical Union in Dec.

[11:20] GaryBergCross: AGU Fall Meeting 2012: 37 December, San Francisco, CA, USA.

[11:20] Peter P. Yim: session-5 will supposedly be on 6-Dec-2012 ... but AGU is on Dec 3~7 ... so there's a

schedule conflict ... we should let Nancy Wiegand & Mike Dean know and come up with an alternate date for session-5

[11:21] Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 11:20am PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

--

notes taken by: Peter P. Yim / 2012.10.19-11:21am PDT

All participants, please review and edit to enhance accuracy and granularity of the documented proceedings.



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