Osnabrück, 2003-03-13

• Wolfram Sperber• Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für

Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB)

• Robert Roggenbuck • Universität Osnabrück/

IWI Osnabrück

Math&Industry: Sharing knowledge betweeen

mathematics and industry Robert Roggenbuck

Wolfram Sperber

IuK 2003 Sharing Knowledge: Scientific Communication

Roggenbuck/Sperber

Agenda1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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Introduction

Applied mathematics plays an important role to understand mathematics

• Mathematics is used in a lot of application fields and a tool to solve problems for a long time ago.

• It is a good way for non-mathematicians to understand what mathematics is doing to study the use of mathematics in applications

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied

mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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The BMBF programs in mathematics

• sponsoring of more than 150 projects in applied mathematics at german research institutions and companies

• three programs: 1993 - 19971997 - 20012001 – 2004

• a fourth program will start 2004 (currently: call for participation)

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Presentation of the projects: the print version

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Comments

Difficulties for the presentation of applied mathematics:

• Classification of projects (by mathematics, by application fields?)

• What is with multimedia-based information, e.g.,

visualization, software, ...?

• time delay, updating of printed information

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Advantages of the Web

Potential advantages of the Web:

• Web is multimedia-based, software, visualisations, simulations, demos, interactive presentations, ... )

• several communities can be addressed (developers, ingeneers, managers, students, mathematicians in industry and services or in research institutions)I

• local management and updating of information

• central services provide an added value

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Up to the Math&Industry

In the past, the Web presentation of the BMBF programs in mathematics was restricted to

• general information about the program

• information about the status seminars

• a list of the projects

http://www.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/groups/amj/bmbf/bmbf.html

this is not enough to provide a comprehensive view about the objectives and aims of the projects

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

Roggenbuck/Sperber

Main aims of the project „Math&Industry“

• development of a concept for a comprehensive, high-quality and standardized Web presentation projects of projects in applied mathematics

• main requirements:

• user-friendly,

• efficient access to the information of projects,

• flexible,

• long-term stable.

• implementation of the concept within the BMBF programs in applied mathematics

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Project data

• start of the project: 2001-09-01

• Participating institutions: ZIB Berlin (project office, management, pilot user)

IWI Osnabrück (technical development)

IWR Heidelberg (pilot user)

Uni Freiburg (pilot user)

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dezentral architecture (the Math-Net principle)

Web site

project 1

Web site

project 2

Web site

project n

central components of Math&Industry

...

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Local Web sitesTasks:

to provide information about projects in a standardized form:

• uniform structure of the project information

• comprehensive information about a project, particularly for users with non-mathematical background

• enrichment of information by metadata, allowing to process the information by machines

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Central components

Central portal http://www.mathematik-21.de:

• Gathering and processing of the local information (particularly of the metadata)

• Services, which provide different views to the

information of projects

• Development of ontologies (to define the relations real problems - modelling - mathematical aspects)

• Archiving of finished projects

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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Presentation of projects in the Web?

Example: Umlaufplanung

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A first summary

each project has a lot of relevant information:

• the problem and the aims

• the modeling of the problem

• the mathematical approach

• results and products

• administrative data

to present a mathematical project is much more than a single Web page!

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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Aims

• the Web presentations of the projects are addressed particularly to engineers, managers, technicians, and mathematicians coming from industry and services (users, who work actively in this field and also users, who could be interested in this field)

• the presentations should be focused to the real problems and the results of a project

• the Web presentations should provide

• a fast overview about a project

• detailed information about special aspects of the problem and its solution

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Structure of Websites

advantages of the standardization:

• a easy navigation for the human user (uniform navigation within the Web presentation of a project)

• allows to process the information by machines ( better retrieval functionalities in the information space, defined by the Web presentations of the projects in the BMBF programs in mathematics)

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Structuring the project information (top level)

Overview about the Project

(Projektübersicht)

The Problem(Das Problem)

Results and Products(Anwendungen und

Produkte)

Models*(Modelle)

Participants(Beteiligte)

Mathematical Aspects (Mathematische

Behandlung)

* topic specific and mathematical modeling

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Groups and subgroups of the Math&Industry Page

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• Participants (Beteiligte) Project officer / Associates (Projektverantwortliche /Mitarbeiter) Companies / Scientific institutions

(Firmen / Wissenschaftliche Institutionen)

• The problem (Das Problem) Problem specification (Problembeschreibung) Glossary (Glossar) Related questions (Verwandte Fragestellungen)

Groups and subgroups

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• Models (Modelle) Modeling (Modellierung) Glossary (Glossar) Similar models (Ähnliche Modelle)

• Mathematical Aspects (Mathematische Behandlung) Mathematical Models (Mathematische Modelle) Mathematical methods and procedures

(Mathematische Methoden und Verfahren) Publications (Publikationen) Software /Simulations (Software / Simulationen) Glossary (Glossar) Related mathematical problems (Ähnliche mathematische Probleme)

The groups and subgroups

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Currently, the proposal is under discussion (until end of March)

problems

• names of the groups and subgroups

• redundance: the contents of the groups may overlap

• assignment subgroups - groups

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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The Math&Industry Page: a local portal to the information of a project

Some comments:

• The Math&Industry Page is a classification schema for the information of a project.

• the core of the Math&Industry Page: the links to the information in the groups and subgroups

• further on the Math&Industry Page:

• the title of the project

• in the future: a navigation bar, linked to the central services of Math&Industry

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Example:„Umlaufplanung“the project page „Über das Projekt“

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Example:„Umlaufplanung“the project page „Anwendungsszenarien“

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If the projects would reorganize its Web presentation in this way,

• then the information of the projects could be harvested and indexed according to this structure,

• then the central services could generate and manage various views over the projects, e.g.,

a list of all projects, a list of all projects providing software, etc.

an enhanced search (a search over the whole information space and also a search in the groups/subgroups of the Math&Industry Page)

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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More semantic information about the single facts of a project

A more sophisticated access to the information requiresmore semantic annotation of the information

a better semantic annotation of the contents of the groups and subgroups is needed

This means: standardization for the description of information for• publications, • persons, • institutions, • glossaries, • ...

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The approach

• Question 1: What should be presented?

structuring of information,

fixing the vocabulary

• Question 2: How should the contents be presented?

• partly the Math-Net developments can be used

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Example: data about publications

Metadata:

• Author

• Title

• URL

• Keywords

• Classification: MSC, PACS, ....

• ...

To do: create the HTML pages and the according metadata

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

Roggenbuck/Sperber

The concept of the WebSiteMaker

• a tool to generate a complete Web presentation for a project

• two levels:

1. top level (choose the subgroup, for which a Web page should be generated)

2. Subgroup level: forms to create Web pages and the corresponding metadata

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Prototype of the WebSiteMakerthe start form

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Prototype of the WebSiteMakerproject data

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Prototype of the WebSiteMakerthe choice page

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Prototype of the WebSiteMakerThe PageMaker for publications: the start page

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Prototype of the WebSiteMaker The PageMaker for publications: the input form

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Prototype of the WebSiteMaker The PageMaker for publications: the generated Web

page

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Prototype of the WebSiteMake

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Agenda

1. Introduction2. Presentation of applied mathematics3. The Math&Industry project: Aims4. An example5. Structuring of information6. The Math&Industry-Page7. Metadata8. The WebSiteMaker9. About the central portal

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The Search Services

• Lists of special subjects (e.g., projects, institutions)

• Simple fulltext query• Field-specific queries

(e.g., for document titles, names, organizations,...)

• Searching / browsing through a glossary

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The central portal - First steps: More information of projects

http://www.mathematik-21.de

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State of the art – next steps

• currently: test phase of the WebSiteMaker

• discussion and updating of the WebSiteMaker

• creating Web presentations of the projects

according to the concept

• building up central services for Math&Industry

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Thanks!