An ontological engineering approach for automating inspection and quarantine at airports

Abstract

Customs and quarantine departments are applying information systems to automate their inspection processes and improve their inspection efficiency and accuracy. The product codes from the Harmonized System (HS codes) are the essential elements of the system's integration, automation and intelligence. The identified HS codes are well-accepted and precise product references used by customs authorities, to match applicable policies to the products being inspected and taxed. Domain ontology for importing and exporting industry can be used to acquire HS codes for given products, and is a prerequisite for an integrated and intelligent automated inspection system. The authors have proposed and implemented an importing and exporting domain ontology. The ontology is composed of an integrated and comprehensive knowledge base derived from static dictionaries and the HS specification, and dynamic processing data. Based on this ontology, a reasoning engine is developed to generate HS codes intelligently for the given product names. Information systems can use the engine to get HS codes for submitted products and find applicable policies automatically. The ontology and the engine have been implemented in a Java-based platform and published as a HS Web service. In this paper, knowledge structure, reasoning mechanism and implementation details for the domain ontology and reasoning engine are presented. A test bed in the application environment has been conducted and experimental results have been obtained. The ontology and the service have the potential to be widely used by authorities and international traders of importing and exporting industry around the world.

Multi-dimension semantic dictionary for online intelligence

“…Information systems can use the engine to get HS codes for submitted products and find applicable policies automatically. The ontology and the engine have been implemented in a Javabased platform and published as an HS Web service [5].…”

“…Several commercial applications are using ontologies to improve their transaction and information retrieval process [5].…”

Semi-automatic Semantic Annotation Tool for Digital Music

“…Use of ontological semantics in different domains has increasingly become popular (e.g. [Zang et al 2008]) and use of annotation ontology by extending features needed for annotation is also not new (Dedek et al, 2008). Similarly, in a novel way, this paper will present a general approach for annotating music files that considers both MPEG-7 objective data about the music audio as well as extends multimedia ontology for the purpose of annotating music files in particular.…”

An XML-based data interchange protocol and supporting systems for online customs declaration

“…The Department of Chinese Inspection and Quarantine has, therefore, developed a distributed information system, i.e., CIQ 2000. CIQ 2000 has been put into use by all ports of China, to facilitate inspection and quarantine processing [1]. Logistics companies such as FedEx, DHL and UPS, have also been equipped with powerful information systems to track their shipments and maintenance and performance records, so that their clients can check on the status and whereabouts of their parcels.…”