View source for Earth Science Metadata and GeoSpatial-Temporal Reasoning

Date: December 10, 2009

Location: New York, NY

Chapter: New York


Earth Science Metadata and GeoSpatial-Temporal Reasoning
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Session-Level:Intermediate
Session-Type:Technology-Application-Research


In this session we take a timely look at climate and geospatial metadata standards, processing methodologies and tools. The Semantic Geospatial Web introduces meaning to the development of spatial metadata with the help of ontologies, which will improve precision during search and support data interoperability for distributed heterogeneous data sets. As part of an ongoing effort to develop standards and tools this session will provide a forum for discussion and is an opportunity to plan future collaboration.

Contents [hide]
1 Welcome
2 Community Updates
2.1 Sandy Santra - Singularity is near. A Brief review of the Singularity Summit [ Slides ]
2.2 David Siegel - Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business (New book)
3 IRI Data Library Dataset Function Ontology and Multiple Metadata Framework
4 GeoSpatial, Temporal Reasoning with AllegroGraph Franz
5 Who attended?

Welcome
Community Updates
Sandy Santra - Singularity is near. A Brief review of the Singularity Summit [ Slides ]

David Siegel - Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business (New book)

IRI Data Library Dataset Function Ontology and Multiple Metadata Framework
M. Benno Blumenthal and John del Corral International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Palisades, NY

The standards underlying the Semantic Web -- Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) -- show great promise in addressing some of the basic problems in earth science metadata. They provide a framework for explicitly describing the data models implicit in programs that display and manipulate data. They also provide a framework where multiple metadata standards can be described. Most importantly, these data models and metadata standards can be interrelated, a key step in creating interoperability. As an exercise in understanding how this framework might be used, we have created an RDF expression of the datasets and some of the metadata in the IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library. This includes concepts like datasets, units, dependent variables, and independent variables. We have also created an RDF expression of a taxonomy that forms the basis of an earth data search interface. These concepts include location, time, quantity, author, and institution. A series of inference engines are then used to infer the connections between data-oriented concepts of the data library to the distinctly different conceptual framework of the data search.

We would also like to use this RDF framework to gather and operate on dataset metadata. The goal is to interoperate between metadata conventions that are attached to data as they travel in different formats and are processed by different software. One could also envision a processing framework that records the connections between processed data, their source data, and their processing filters that could be used both to reapply the processing and document the results.



GeoSpatial, Temporal Reasoning with AllegroGraph Franz
Jans Aasman presenting the latest developments on the Semantic GeoSpatial Web and processing with the Allegrograph RDFStore. A modern, high-performance, persistent RDF graph database for applications. AllegroGraph uses disk-based storage, enabling it to scale to billions of triples while maintaining high performance. AllegroGraph supports SPARQL, RDFS++, and Prolog reasoning from applications. Enterprises have begun utilizing semantic technologies and standards for knowledge representation, knowledge access and discovery. Combining this with GeoTemporal analytics is the next stage of Business Intelligence in the Enterprise.

Dr. Jans Aasman

Franz's President and CEO, a longtime customer, joined Franz from TNO Telecom based in The Netherlands. Jans Aasman started his career as an experimental and cognitive psychologist, earning his PhD in cognitive science with a detailed model of car driver behavior using Common Lisp and Soar. He has spent most of his professional life in telecommunications research, specializing in intelligent user interfaces and applied artificial intelligence projects. From 1995 to 2004, he was also a part-time professor in the Industrial Design department of the Technical University of Delft. Jans is currently the CEO of Franz Inc., the leading supplier of commercial, persistent, and scalable RDF database products that provide the storage layer for powerful reasoning and ontology modeling capabilities for Semantic Web applications.

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