Ontology-supported scientific data frameworks: The Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory experience

Abstract

We have developed a semantic data framework that supports interdisciplinary virtual observatory projects across the fields of solar physics, space physics and solar-terrestrial physics.This work required a formal, machine understandable representation for concepts, relations and attributes of physical quantities in the domains of interest as well as their underlying data representations. To fulfill this need we developed a set of solar-terrestrial ontologies as formal encodings of the knowledge in the Ontology Web Language -Description Logic (OWL-DL) format.We present our knowledge representation and reasoning needs motivated by the context of Virtual Observatories, from fields spanning upper atmospheric terrestrial physics to solar physics, whose intent is to provide access to observational datasets. The resulting data framework is built upon semantic web methodologies and technologies and provides virtual access to distributed and heterogeneous sets of data as if all resources appear to be organized, stored and retrieved from a local environment. . Our conclusion is that the combination of use case-driven small and modular ontology development, coupled with free and open-source software tools and languages provides sufficient expressiveness and capabilities for an initial production implementation and sets the stage for a more complete semantic-enablement of future frameworks.

A semantically enabled metadata repository for scientific data

“…In an effort to leverage existing ontologies, we searched for ontologies that dealt with spacecraft and instrument metadata. The two most appropriate of these ontologies were 1) Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Technology (SWEET) Ontology (Raskin and Pan 2005), and 2) the Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO) Ontology (McGuinness et al 2007, Fox et al 2009). …”

“…However, these technologies are still in their early stages of development and use. While some data managers and providers offer semantic capabilities (for example, McGuinness et al 2007, Narock andKing 2008;Merka et al 2008a;Narock et al 2009;Fox et al 2009;Fox 2012, Arko 2014), their number is relatively small. That may be due to a perceived high 'barrier to entry' in enabling semantic capabilities.…”

Web-Scale Normalization of Geospatial Metadata Based on Semantics-Aware Data Sources

“…In fact, the paper acknowledges that methodologies grounded on selected ontologies and, in general, semantic data sources for either indexing of resources or query expansion (such as in [49,50]) are often biased by subjectivity in the organization of these sources. This is particularly relevant in contexts, such as that of geosciences, where distinct CoP typically employ different terminologies.…”

A Private Cloud-Based Architecture for the Brazilian Weather and Climate Virtual Observatory

“…Within this framework it is possible to catalog data; process, visualize or cross-correlate it with tools both on the desktop and on the web; generate new data collections and create and use workflows and processing pipelines to automate new analysis and discoveries. The concept of Virtual Observatories is also being used in other science fields, such as Earth Sciences [3], Solar-terrestrial Physics [4], Environmental Sciences [5] and even Computer Science and IT itself [6]. Virtual Observatories are a natural extension of the paradigm of centralized middleware proposed to allow access to data and tool for specific domains [7,8], but allowing the inclusion of external data and tools, therefore increasing their usage and possibilities.…”