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Preliminary results of the

Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Waters (EDEN-IW) project

Practical lessons.

P. Haastrup

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The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water project

Funded by the EC 5th FP, IST programme, DG INFSO

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EDEN-IW Overview

• Objective: access to distributed environmental data using agent technology

• Partners: CNR (I), ED (GR), IOW (F), NERI (DK), QMUL (UK), JRC (EC)

• Users community: EEA, ETC/W, IME, US-EPA, US-DOE, US-DOD

• Start: July 2001 – End: December 2004.• Budget: 4.8 M€

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Initial (ambitious) objectives:

• provide access to distributed environmental data for water

• through an intelligent, configurable interface acting as a one-stop shop

• databases, translations, models, policy support

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Vision

• Potentials for making a world-wide database

• for inland water; all water or indeed all environmental data

• ready for policy support

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Data harmonisation goals:

• maintaining autonomy of the data custodians• databases are integrated into an efficient tool• shared knowledge base• providing uniform access to disparate

information resource• Technology utilised/researched: Independent

software agents. Links to previous US project EDEN.

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Conceptual Model

DB1

Resources

Key

DirectoryDB1DB1

Ontology

Tasks

Agent

DataBaseResources

Users

HumanUsers

WebServices

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Advanced Application

DirectoryAgents

ResourceAgents

DSSAgents

OntologyAgents

StatisticsAgents

UserAgents

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Agents - what are they doing ?

Richer “vocabulary” than normal software programs– Around 50 words vocabulary “agree, accept, reply,

query, wait, later……..”– Conceptually similar to sending email to another

“person”, however we would like to have the environmental data returned in close to real time.

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Features of EDEN-IW Prototype

• Core query and meta-data high-level queries supported • Edges of system are two Web portals

• Data Owner Web portal implemented as Java Servlet • Data User Web portal implemented as JSP

• System Infrastructure implemented as an integrated set of agents and Web services

• User Agent • Queries via Form supplemented by Map User Interface • Web-client on Web-server on UA node• Multi-lingual queries (but not yet multi-lingual results) • Results returned in graphical and table format

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EDEN-IW Application

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EDEN-IW GIS Interface

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Scaling and Aggregating Data

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Exploitation Areas

• Agent Technology• Data Bases and linkage to Agents• System Design • Ontologies and Multi-lingual Aspects• Safety and Security Issues

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Lessons and plans:

• Agent Technology– Maturing, but slowly

– Right now slow on developments and slow on testing

– Distribution issues: Open source

– Network architecture issues not yet completely resolved (sub-nets, firewalls, open ports (at least 2 ports needed - most of the world are now opening only port 80! (and sometimes 25 (email servers)!!)

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Lessons and plans:

• Data Bases and linkage to Agents– Implicit knowledge in databases are hard to get explicitly

build into the agents world.

– Resource agents are thus laborious to make

– Database owners needs convincing

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Lessons and plans:

• System Design– The distributed architecture is the “future”…

– Links to both the Water Information System for Europe (WISE) and the Intercalibration Reportnet node

– (email protocols may be the future to get around firewall issues)

– Distributed System Architecture

– User Interface Map Server using JRC/CCM

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Ontologies and Multi-lingual Aspects

• Ontologies are implemented through DAML/OIL - XML/RDF

• We use both a global and a local implementation “close to the user, and close to the resource

• Cross mapping is an issue• Glossary (Inland water) included• Propagation through the software components is an

issue

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Global Ontology Observation Station

U nit Determinant

Medium

AnalyticalFraction TimeStamp

NERIObservationCharacteristics NERITime

NERIStation

Table(x) Table(y) Table(z) Table(m)

Local Ontology

Local DB Schema

Semantic Mapping

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Safety and Security Issues

• Firewalls getting up faster than we can implement the necessary changes in the software

• security issues in general “just” similar to a web server…..

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Work in progress:

State of play after 3 years (4 month to go)

• Technology well understood (including limits)

• 2-3 Inland Water databases in system

• Several agents running in test net

• Keyword translation running in test net (3 languages).

• Distributed resources running on test network

• Real net application: work ongoing

• Software developed: open source

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Final comments

We have learned a lot about:

– distributed systems, agents, ontologies, terminology matching, environmental management

Clearly we are still some distance from rolling out the agent technology/service

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International links

EDEN project Hazardous substances (US) -> EDEN-IW (EU) Water

(cross Atlantic collaboration working!!)

It would be beneficial to have the research happening at the same time…..

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What happens next ?

To be discussed - also during this meeting.