18 years of engagement for metadata and semantics in

Agriculture: was it worth the effortDr. rer. nat. Johannes Keizer, Goettingen, 2016-11-24

What we achieved really• No one denies the importants of semantics

anymore, Ontologies everywhere• Agroportal and GACS .. community not FAO alone• The VocBench (a nice piece of open Source

software)• The AGRIS LOD application is a powerful

demonstrator, what LOD can deliver• Other important experiements: A prototype of a

dataset registry (CIARD RING), Agriprofiles• Conceptual framework• and most important!

http://aims.fao.org

Community

SEMANTICS ON THE WEB

Looking around

The semantic web

The 2001 Scientific American article by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila described an expected evolution of the existing Web to a Semantic Web.[5] In 2006, Berners-Lee and colleagues stated that: "This simple idea…remains largely unrealized".[6] In 2013, more than four million Web domains contained Semantic Web markup.[7]

According to the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief the total number of registered domain names is 284 million, an increase over the January 2014 figure of 265 million

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN PRACTICE?

The cloud gets bigger

What application do you mostly use?

• Evernote• Google Suite• Dropbox• Economist• Amazon• Drupal• Facebook

Semantics in EvernoteExistent! But Kind of ridiculous

• Simple tagging system• No polyhierarachy allowed

(poly hierarchy is one of the most real events )

• No relations between tags• Useless inheritance features

Google Suite • The same charme as normal google

search• Have you created and used categories

in Gmail?• Why not even auto categorization?• «Add recipients» most useful feature• Google Drive still uses mostly the

concept of physical folders• Most effort into displaying adds

AmazonThe most intelligent app

They mostly get it

• Artificial Intelligence behind• Analyzing reading habits• But the possibilities would

be enormous– Think about

autocategorization and linking of your notes

• But: closed shop

Dropbox

DrupalDrupal has modules that allow to

:

• expose internal data as RDF;• expose internal data through a SPARQL engine;• dynamically query remote RDF stores through a

SPARQL client;• execute dynamic SPARQL queries and store resulting

triples as nodes according to a pre-defined mapping

Linked Data

Economist

Facebook

EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF DRUPAL THE SEMANTIC WEB COMMUNITY HAS NOT REALLY INFLUENCED MAIN STREAM APPLICATIONS

Conclusions

BUSINESS CASE NOT STRONG ENOUGH?

Why?

“… research suggests that seven sectors alone could generate more than $3 trillion a year in additional value as a result of open data, which is already giving rise to

hundreds of entrepreneurial businesses and helping established companies to segment markets …”

Source: McKinsey Global Institute

"Making these data public will allow people to make their own assessments of the progress of

our Good Growth Plan. It is also blurring the traditional roles of business, government and

NGOs by highlighting our collective responsibility to address acute global

challenges. Above all, the data will be of value to farmers, enabling them to increase

productivity sustainably and to enhance their livelihoods."

"Open data has the power to solve our most challenging sustainability problems. … Agri-tech businesses have a big role to play in

finding novel solutions to these problems. … Syngenta is taking a step that puts them at the forefront of the open data movement in

their sector. We look forward to working with them to unlock benefits for farmers and

consumers worldwide."

Mike Mack, CEO of Syngenta (2015, for 1st GGP data release)

Jeni Tennison, Deputy CEO and CTO of the Open Data Institute

Now there is big data Hype

Paradigm Shift for research• In the past

– 80% data production, 20% data evaluatio

• In the future– 20% data production, 80% data

evaluation

We have GODAN

• Advocacy • Think Tank• Knowledge Network

Aggregation States of Knowledge

Data and Information in Agricultural Research and Extension

Dataset Registries

Data processingSemantics

LOD Generator

triplifier, concept and entity

identifier

Data ServicesWebservices + APIs to

data stores

Data Storage

Infrastructure elements for FAIR data

THE FAIR PRINCIPLEresources need to be

FindableAccessibleInteroperableReusable

=

FAIRFAIR principle by Barend Mons, EC, EOSC

Data Issues

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n4/full/ng0411-281.html

Going on!• Semantics are needed• Community Building is Prime necessity-

Chania Group• Pragmatism in approach, avoiding over

commitment• Developing plans for a data infrastructure• Riding the big data tiger• Influencing mainstream productivity tools

eRosa