ppy/EarthScienceOntolog-s04_chat-transcript_unedited_20121101a.txt --------- Chat transcript from room: ontolog_20121101 2012-11-01 GMT-07:00 [time-stamps in PDT] --------- [09:10] PeterYim: Welcome to the = EarthScienceOntolog: Panel Session-4 - Thu 2012-11-01 = Mini-Series Theme: An Earth Science Ontology Dialog ("EarthScienceOntolog") Session Topic: A Review of Ontologies for Earth Sciences Session Co-chairs: * Dr. Dalia Varanka (USGS) and Dr. Mark Schildhauer (NCEAS, UCSB) Panelists: * Dr. Luis Bermudez (OGC) - "Use of Ontologies within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)" * Dr. Boyan Brodaric (Geological Survey of Canada) - "Toward an integrated surface and subsurface water ontology" * Dr. Norman Morrison (U of Manchester, UK) - "The Environment Ontology: What sort of a place was it?" * Dr. Thomas Huang (JPL/NASA) - "From Modeling the Earth to Terrain Simulation" * Dr. Mark Schildhauer (UC Santa Barbara) - "Where do we go from here with Earth and Environmental Science Ontologies?" (a joint work by Mark Schildhauer & Ben Adams) Logistics: * Refer to details on session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_11_01 * (if you haven't already done so) please click on "settings" (top center) and morph from "anonymous" to your RealName * Mute control: *7 to un-mute ... *6 to mute * Can't find Skype Dial pad? ** for Windows Skype users: Can't find Skype Dial pad? ... it's under the "Call" dropdown menu as "Show Dial pad" ** for Linux Skype users: please stay with (or downgrade to) Skype version 2.x for now (as a Dial pad seems to be missing on Linux-based Skype v4.x for skype-calls.) . == Proceedings: == . [09:14] anonymous morphed into Bruno Emond [09:20] anonymous morphed into Deborah L Nichols [09:21] anonymous morphed into Ben Adams [09:25] anonymous1 morphed into CeciliaZanniMerk [09:28] anonymous1 morphed into TomTinsley [09:30] anonymous1 morphed into Joel Sachs [09:30] anonymous2 morphed into Genhan Chen [09:32] Dan1 morphed into Dan [09:32] Dan morphed into DanDong [09:32] anonymous2 morphed into Fran Lightsom [09:32] DanDong morphed into Dan Dong [09:32] anonymous1 morphed into LuisBermudez [09:32] Norman Morrison morphed into NormanMorrison [09:32] anonymous4 morphed into DaliaVaranka [09:32] anonymous5 morphed into Boyan Brodaric [09:32] anonymous3 morphed into TorstenHahmann [09:32] Bruno Emond morphed into BrunoEmond [09:32] Deborah L Nichols morphed into DeborahLNichols [09:33] Dan Dong morphed into DanDong [09:33] anonymous morphed into Marshall X Ma [09:34] anonymous1 morphed into hlapp [09:35] anonymous morphed into Semir Sarajlic [09:35] anonymous1 morphed into Uma [09:36] anonymous2 morphed into JoelBender [09:36] Fran Lightsom morphed into FranLightsom [09:38] anonymous1 morphed into Krzysztof Janowicz [09:38] anonymous2 morphed into Alex Sorokine, ORNL [09:38] Semir Sarajlic morphed into SemirSarajlic [09:40] anonymous morphed into DeborahMacPherson [09:40] anonymous1 morphed into Deborah McGuinness [09:40] PeterYim: == DaliaVaranka opening the session with the intro slides ... [09:41] anonymous morphed into Yan Liu@UIUC [09:41] List of members: Alex Sorokine, ORNL, alex.shkotin, Ben Adams, BobbinTeegarden, BobSmith, Boyan Brodaric, BrunoEmond, CeciliaZanniMerk, Chuck Ward, DaliaVaranka, DanDong, David Valentine, USCD/SDSC, Deborah McGuinness, DeborahLNichols, DeborahMacPherson, FrankOlken1, FranLightsom, Gary Berg-Cross, Genhan Chen, hlapp, Joel Sachs, JoelBender, KenBaclawski, Krzysztof Janowicz, LuisBermudez, Mark Schildhauer, Marshall X Ma, NormanMorrison, PeterYim, Scott Hills, SemirSarajlic, TerryLongstreth, ToddSchneider, TomTinsley, TorstenHahmann, Uma, vnc2, Yan Liu@UIUC [09:43] hlapp asked for a victim, I choose... TerryLongstreth [09:43] anonymous morphed into Whitenack [09:44] PeterYim: == LuisBermudez presenting ... [09:46] PeterYim: whoever posted into the box next to the "hand" button, please re-post into the editing box on the left of the "send" button [09:47] anonymous morphed into CarlosRueda [09:47] PeterYim: your question: "is there chat support ..." - the answer is, the in-session chat-support is right here; after the session, the conversation can continue - see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_11_01#nid3HA5 [09:48] anonymous morphed into krishna Sinha [09:48] anonymous1 morphed into Cyber-ShARE [09:51] NormanMorrison: Out of interest, is there a twitter hashtag in use for the session [09:53] ToddSchneider: Luis, does OGC recommend use of, or alignment to, a foundational ontology to facilitate interoperability or integration? [10:04] PeterYim: @LuizBermudez - what open "use license" is used (by default) to OGC's open Intellectual Properties (IP's) [10:05] PeterYim: ^"used ... on" [10:08] PeterYim: == BoyanBrodaric presenting ... [10:10] anonymous morphed into Thomas Huang [10:14] anonymous morphed into DougFoxvog [10:15] LuisBermudez: Hi Todd. OGC doesn't currently recommended alignment to a foundational ontology. The only related OGC standard (recommendation) is GeoSPARQL. My sense is that we cannot call it a foundational ontology. [10:17] ToddSchneider: Luis, is OGC considering such a recommendation? I'm sure it would help, eventually:) [10:20] LuisBermudez: Todd, I will take your recommendation back to OGC. [10:20] LuisBermudez: Peter, OGC IP document is here: http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=32268 [10:28] PeterYim: == NormanMorrison presenting ... [10:29] krishna Sinha: Krishna Sinha :Boyan ,is it possible to extend this to oceans? Are there any obvious links? [10:31] Boyan Brodaric: Krishna---we haven't looked at oceans, but my sense is that at least some of it is directly applicable. Boyan [10:31] Gary Berg-Cross: For people interested in working more on semantics of a container idea it is a topic at the Nov 28-30 workshop at USGS in Reston VA see http://vocamp.org/wiki/GeoVoCampSOCoP2012 [10:38] TorstenHahmann: Krisha, I guess it depends on what exactly you want to model. For example reefs or underwater ridges (as Norman is talking about) could be modeled similarly using certain kinds of voids (hollows) based on containment. [10:44] Gary Berg-Cross: @Norman does ENVo cover the idea of a site as in ecological site or other types of sites? [10:45] PeterYim: @Norman & all - your slides are now updated (in particular slide#6) [10:45] PeterYim: == ThomasHuang presenting ... [10:47] NormanMorrison: Torsten, Boyan & Krishna, yes, it was encouraging to see that we have independently adopted the same formalism of (voids) holes and containment. [10:50] Mark Schildhauer: interesting to know, though, whether these formalisms are identical or merely similar [10:55] NormanMorrison: @Gary yes we have sites represented in EnvO, but I would say this is an area that is not that well covered. We also incorporate a number of Biome classification systems that are non orthogonal. This is certainly an area that would benefit from further work. [11:00] Boyan Brodaric: Norman---the conceptual convergence is nice to see. Do you use BFO for the hole/containment schema, or did you enhance BFO in that direction? My look at BFO in this respect is that it has some hooks that need fleshing out. [11:01] Gary Berg-Cross: @Norman Thank you. Perhaps we can exchange ideas about this later. Site is a topic at the Nov 28-30 workshop at USGS in Reston VA see http://vocamp.org/wiki/GeoVoCampSOCoP2012 [11:02] TorstenHahmann: Mark, I totally agree that this is a key question. Norman: in that regard, to what extent is Envo formalized? Is it restricted to a IS-A taxonomy right now? That's what I found on the website you mentioned (in the download section). [11:07] PeterYim: == MarkSchildhauer presenting ... [11:08] Gary Berg-Cross: The connection to BFO suggests that ENVi leverages its concepts and relations. [11:11] alex.shkotin: What about this authority http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/definition? [11:11] PeterYim: @Mark, Ben & All - ref. your slides #3 & 4 - there is an ongoing effort under the Open Ontology Repository (OOR) initiative, that makes an attempt to build a federated network of those who are running ontology repositories, so that there can be a "logical" go-to place to access them, and where other value-added services can be applied ... among the repositories, those of interest to this group like MMISW-ORR, SOCoP-OOR, ORNL-DAAC, BioPortal, etc. are on board there - see: http://oor.net/ [11:11] NormanMorrison: Torsten: Yes, EnvO does leverage it's concepts and relations from BFO. There is an 'EnvO2' in the pipeline that will do so more rigourously. [11:16] PeterYim: the OOR effort welcome participation of projects that are running ontology repository ("open" ones, especially) ... join us! [11:20] PeterYim: == Q&A and Open Discussion now ... [11:21] Gary Berg-Cross: Note VoCamps in spirit do try to research existing vocabularies. Then build on these refining and extending these as part of the effort. [11:21] anonymous morphed into MyungHwa Hwang [11:22] anonymous1 morphed into AlexM, Exelis [11:23] Alex Sorokine, ORNL: to Boyan: how do you treat granularity in relation to your concept of gaps and voids? [11:23] TorstenHahmann: Btw, the ontologies Boyan and I developed will be available next week in the COLORE ontology repository (one of the OOR Peter was referring to) available at http://code.google.com/p/colore/ [11:24] Gary Berg-Cross: @Torsten, so these are formalized in common logic? [11:24] anonymous morphed into Ramona Walls [11:24] TorstenHahmann: @Gary: yes. [11:24] Mark Schildhauer: thanks, Boyan... [11:25] MichaelGruninger: It will be important to explicitly use the axioms of the ontologies so that we can show that the commonalities are more than an intuitive similarity. [11:26] MichaelGruninger: Identical concepts in two ontologies would mean that from the axioms alone we can entail the axioms satisfied by one concept can be entailed by the axioms satisfied by the other ontology, together with specifications of the mappings [11:27] TorstenHahmann: @Gary: for clarification: the DOLCE ontology that Boyan presented is generated from the Common Logic ontology, it obviously only captures only a subset of what we formalized in Common Logic [11:28] Mark Schildhauer: http://obofoundry.org [11:28] alex.shkotin: @Mark, it looks like we need to create a formal theory one for every particular science? [11:28] Gary Berg-Cross: @MichaelGruninger So your and Torsten's work on spatial ontologies is an example where you have done this type of mapping and close look at axioms. Right? [11:29] anonymous morphed into krishna sinha [11:30] MichaelGruninger: @Gary: Exactly. The challenges posed by today's speakers is to identify all of the different ontologies that people are working on, and to figure out what the possible mappings could be [11:30] Mark Schildhauer: @alex-- I see more a need for common design principles in ontology construction *across* disciplines, and shared concepts wherever possible [11:31] Mark Schildhauer: http://oor.net [11:33] CeciliaZanniMerk: Michael and Torsten, can I have a link or some biblio on your spatial ontologies ? [11:33] Boyan Brodaric: @Alex---the degree of formality will be use-governed; for some purposes high formality it might not be necessary. But, to leverage reasoning it would be desirable. [11:34] Mark Schildhauer: Boyan-- did you still have a question? Or can we take Joel's question next? [11:34] NormanMorrison: On this topic MIREOT (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term): http://obi-ontology.org/page/MIREOT [11:34] Boyan Brodaric: No question [11:34] krishna sinha: Mark Schildhauer---I think developing a general ontology based solely on vocabulary is difficult to accomplish. I dont see how non specialists with respect to a given discipline could even begin to discover data.. We need something beyond just terms [11:34] NormanMorrison: Ramona (who's online) knows more about this [11:35] alex.shkotin: @Mark, it looks like common sense knowledge formalization. Like Ernst Davis. [11:36] DougFoxvog: @Michael, I think we can distinguish theories from definitional ontologies. If that is done, then different theories with different axioms could be defined, so that two terms from different ontologies can be accepted as identical concepts, even though the axioms defined for one (with one theory) are not necessarily entailed by the axioms of the other (defined with a different theory). [11:36] TorstenHahmann: as follow-up to Boyan answer to Alex's question [14:23]: I suppose you meant granularity of voids? we currently only distinguish two levels of granularity: the object level (physical objects) and the matter level. Those we formalized in the FOIS paper (2012). It is a simplified version of the DOLCE concept of constituency. [11:36] DougFoxvog: This entails reifying the different theories in different theory ontologies. [11:37] TorstenHahmann: @Cecilia: sure, what format would you like? They are buried in the really long bibliography of my thesis. [11:37] Mark Schildhauer: oops-- sorry Joel. Good point- we didn't have time to go into the usage of these ontologies, in terms of semantic annotation and mediation! [11:38] TorstenHahmann: @Luis: is there any effort to formalize the semantics of the GeoSPARQL concepts any further? [11:39] CeciliaZanniMerk: Torsten, OWL and PDF will be fine ... :-D) OWL to play with, PDF to understand ... ... we have just begun to work on an urban ontology for remote sensing, and the spatial relationships are one of the key aspects [11:40] CeciliaZanniMerk: Torsten, if you could send me some articles, it would be great ... merk [at] unistra.fr [11:40] PeterYim: @Joel ... would you post your question here (we can leave the chat-room going for a few more minutes) or put that out to the community for further discussion - see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_11_01#nid3HA5 [11:40] NormanMorrison: Thanks again to the organisers. As a first timer to the Ontolog session I found this to be an excellent forum and certainly hope to join future discussions. @Joel - next time perhaps... :-) [11:40] Mark Schildhauer: @joel-- for example, one typical application of an ontology term would be, via annotation, asserting that some data value or column in a data set "IS" a (set of) instances of that term. [11:41] List of attendees: Alex Sorokine, ORNL, AlexM, Exelis, Ben Adams, BobSmith, BobbinTeegarden, Boyan Brodaric, Bruno Emond, BrunoEmond, CarlosRueda, CeciliaZanniMerk, Chuck Ward, Cyber-ShARE, DaliaVaranka, DaliaVaranka1, Dan, Dan Dong, Dan1, DanDong, David Valentine, USCD/SDSC, Deborah L Nichols, Deborah McGuinness, DeborahLNichols, DeborahMacPherson, DougFoxvog, Fran Lightsom, FranLightsom, FrankOlken, FrankOlken1, Gary Berg-Cross, Genhan Chen, Joel Sachs, JoelBender, KenBaclawski, Krzysztof Janowicz, LuisBermudez, Mark Schildhauer, Marshall X Ma, MichaelGruninger, MyungHwa Hwang, NancyWiegand, Norman Morrison, NormanMorrison, PeterYim, Ramona Walls, Scott Hills, Semir Sarajlic, SemirSarajlic, TerryLongstreth, Thomas Huang, ToddSchneider, TomTinsley, TorstenHahmann, Uma, Whitenack, Yan Liu@UIUC, alex.shkotin, anonymous, anonymous1, anonymous2, anonymous3, anonymous4, anonymous5, hlapp, krishna Sinha, krishna sinha, vnc2 [11:41] CeciliaZanniMerk: I agree with Norman ... it was my first time also, and i've really appreciated the quality of the presentations and of the discussions ... thanks a lot ! [11:43] TorstenHahmann: @cecilia: I can email you a pdf. [11:43] Mark Schildhauer: @Krishna-- agreed; but well-defined terms developed by experts, and currently housed in thesauri like the AGI example you pointed out to us, can be borrowed and embedded where appropriate in richer constructs? That's what I was intending, sorry it wasn't clear. [11:43] CeciliaZanniMerk: @torsten : thanks ! it would be great ! [11:44] LuisBermudez: @Torsten. The GeoSPARQL semantics are already formalized in OWL http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql. [11:46] TorstenHahmann: @Luis: I meant to formalize it beyond what is already there. In particular whether to formalize the descriptions of each concepts that are currently in English, for example statements like: Exists if the subject SpatialObject spatially contains the object SpatialObject. DE-9IM: T*****FF* [12:00] PeterYim: closing chatroom now! ---------