Semantically-Enabled Virtual Observatories: VSTO Highlights for Observational Data

Deborah McGuinnessActing Director and Senior Research Scientist

Knowledge Systems, AI LaboratoryStanford University

dlm@ksl.stanford.eduhttp://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm

CEO McGuinness Associates

Joint work with Peter Fox, Luca Cinquini, Patrick West, Jose Garcia, James Benedict, Don Middleton

Partially funded by NSF and NASA

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Virtual Observatory Use CaseScientists should be able to access a global, distributed knowledge

base of scientific data that appears to be integrated and locally available

General form of a query: retrieve data (from appropriate collections) subject to (stated and implicit) constraints and create a representation of the data in a manner appropriate for the data and for the end-user

Specific Solar Terrestrial examples (from CEDAR AND MLSO):

1. Plot the Neutral Temperature (Parameter) taken by the Millstone Hill Fabry-Perot interferometer (Instrument) looking in the vertical direction from 1/1/2000 – 8/31/2000 as a time series.

2. Find data, representing the state of the neutral atmosphere anywhere above 100km and toward the Arctic circle (above 45N) at times of high geomagnetic activity.

Tropopause

http://aerosols.larc.nasa.gov/volcano2.swf

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Atmosphere Use Case

• Determine the statistical signatures of both volcanic and solar forcings on the height of the tropopause From paleoclimate researcher – Caspar Ammann – Climate and Global

Dynamics Division of NCAR - CGD/NCAR

Layperson perspective:

- look for indicators of acid rain in the part of the atmosphere we experience…

(look at measurements of sulfur dioxide in relation to sulfuric acid after volcanic eruptions at the boundary of the troposphere and the stratosphere)

Nasa funded effort with Fox - NCAR, Sinha - Va. Tech, Raskin - JPL

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Terms

• Operationally: Observational data is data collected using an instrument working in an operating mode operated by an observatory at a particular location at a particular time (range) measuring phenomena or parameters.

• Instrument: An object that measures phenomenon or parameters.

• Observatory: A physical location in which observations are made.

• Data Archive: A collection of information, a file, set of files, or database made available is machine readable form with associated metadata concerning the data’s origin, purpose and use.

• Data product: A formalized and reproducible representation of data elements for consumption by a user or machine process.

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•

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In W3C Ontology rec:OWL

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Partial exposure of Instrument class hierarchy - users seem to LIKE THIS

Semantic filtering by domain or instrument hierarchy

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VSTO Highlights: Capabilities, Tools, Extensibility• Reasoning provides new capabilities:

– Unified query workflow– Decreased input requirements for query: in one base reducing the number of

selections from eight to three– Interface generates only syntactically correct queries: which was not always

ensurable in previous implementations without semantics– Semantic query support: by using background ontologies and a reasoner, our

application has the opportunity to only expose coherent query– Semantic integration: previously users had to remember (and maintain codes) to

account for numerous different ways to combine and plot the data whereas now semantic mediation provides the level of sensible data integration required

– A broader range of potential users (PhD scientists, students, professional research associates and those from outside the fields)

• Tools / Methodology– Reusing OWL-based tools – Protégé, Swoop, Pellet along with social and

technological conventions– Service wrappers to access data stores (CEDAR and MLSO currently)– Methodology – Semantic Technologies as an interactive process

• Easily extensible:– Use existing ontology tools to expand ontology– Tested in SESDI – volcanoes, plate tectonics, atmosphere– Must be monotonic extensions to model

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Pointers

• Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory - vsto.org– Most recent paper: Deborah McGuinness, Peter Fox, Luca Cinquini, Patrick West, Jose Garcia,

James L. Benedict, and Don Middleton. The Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory: A Deployed Semantic Web Application Case Study for Scientific Research. In the proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-07). Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 22-26, 2007. www.ksl.stanford.edu/KSL_Abstracts/KSL-07-01.html

• Semantically-Enabled Science Data Integration sesdi.hao.ucar.edu – Most recent paper: Deborah L. McGuinness, Peter Fox, Krishna Sinha, Rob Raskin. Semantic

Integration of Heterogeneous Volcanic and Atmospheric Data. In the proceedings of the Geoinformatics Conference, San Diego, CA. May 17-18, 2007. gsa.confex.com/gsa/2007GE/finalprogram/abstract_122252.htm

• Community Website – www.PlanetOnt.org

• Building Community:– AGU earth and space science informatics sessions – submission deadline Sept 6 (special issue of

Computers and Geosciences www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/398/description#description

– GSA Geoinformatics sessions (abstract deadline tomorrow)– VOIG community – Virtual Observatories in GeoSciences www.egy.org/VOiG/Home.html

– New Springer Journal - JESI – Journal of Earth Science Informatics -

www2.gsu.edu/~geohab/pages/Journal%20of%20Earth%20Science%20Informatics/JESI.htm

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Extra

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Content: Coupling Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions WEB

Community data archive for observations and models of Earth's upper atmosphere and geophysical indices and parameters needed to interpret them. Includes browsing capabilities by periods, instruments, models, …

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Content: Mauna Loa Solar ObservatoryNear real-time data from Hawaii from a variety of solar instruments.

Source for space weather, solar variability, and basic solar physics

Other content used too – CISM – Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling