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Devices Ontology WG Mtg 2009.01.06

Agenda/minutes for Device Ontology Working Group meeting 2009.01.06

Agenda

Logistics: Welcome, Minutes Review, Agenda Review
Review of previous action items
Search Facets: review of list; prioritization; impact on the ontology.
Applying the facets against a particular portal
End Logistics: Next meeting, Action items, Attendees

Minutes

Logistics: Welcome, Minutes Review, Agenda Review

Minutes review

Agenda approval

What is our ultimate goal? Not just discussions, presumably. "To create a prioritized list of search facets to develop in the ontology."

Introductions

Al Underbrink working on sensor enablement and automation issues for NASA. He has developed an ontology in Frames and OWL to capture SensorML to use for autonomous operations. He is working on the vocabulary needed for describing these operations as well.

(Benno Blumenthal joined the meeting later, escaping the introductions. His work is referenced several places below.)

Review of previous actions items

[Carlos]

put the email words in the minutes to explain what we're trying to do --> Done.
Announce the following request in email --> Done.

[All] Send one or two links of search engines/faceted searches that give us some indication of how devices are searched (what categories are important).

Carlos: Advanced Searchpage of the Earth System Grid
Luis, Benno:

IRI Data Library & Map Room Search Interfaceincludes: Quantity, Institution, Location, Person, Phenomenon, Realm, Instrument, Platform, Standard Name.
ACT categories to search for instruments/platforms

Roy Lowry: Some dataset search examples: http://www.edios.org/ and http://www.sea-search.net/cdi/and one for cruises http://www.sea-search.net/roscop/welcome.html
GCMD: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/

[Carlos] Add new categories to the facets list: --> Done.
- More general availability status (e.g., 'is the device still made?')
- cost
- whether device includes consumables (or is itself consumed during the process)
- manufacturer, model
- what input/output interfaces are supported (what can I attach to my system, and by what method?)
- what commands are supported

Search facets

Review of list; prioritization; impact on the ontology

See the search facets page; numbers below refer to the list in that page.
(Relevant link: This poster by Benno Blumenthal, et al., 2007.)

Discussion:

Highlighted IRI example (linked above and described in the Blumenthal poster), which uses some of the MMI ontologies/publication of other vocabularies. Suggested this is very applicable to our needs.
In same vein, nice if we have list of main categories (in addition to our total list of categories), as a technique to drive our development of our ontology.
discussion of search facets themselves(note this is the revision discussed):
- what is different between 2 and 9? what is meaning of 9? (compare to our Terms page). Useful comparison: fundamentally, salinity measurements all indicate how much salt, but that concept can be expressed in relative or absolute terms, with different units (grams vs Practical Salinity Units). (Conductivity is also relevant, but fundamentally measures another attribute, albeit one that is closely linked to salinity.)
- also note existence of Method facet (which will explore how measurement is made, in addition to what is actually measured.
- why do we call these 'search facets', and not just 'facets'? Historical reasons (details in previous minutes); we think we can use search as a proxy for the other applications of the ontology. We appreciate that the use cases could be largely reframed as, for example, data analysis use cases, but search seemed the easiest concept to work with.
- (1) Sensor Type -- remove this if we agree it is sloppy shorthand.
  - (Later) Discussed whether 'sensor type' is sloppy or precise shorthand, and the actual applicability of these detailed facets for user searching.
  - In particular, the typical users want to start at a much broader search context, not at this level of detail except in rare cases.
  - Agreement with that general process, but so far no one has brought forth a credible, unambiguous use of 'sensor type', for searching or any other use.
- (2) Delineate different types of Phenomenon (atomic vs composite)
- Also, John points out that OntoSensor (Russomanno et al) has one or two more elements to consider, and took the action item to document those in the minutes. [Upon further examination, it looks like we have those items covered at this point, though I'm not sure of the exact mapping in some cases: application, accuracy, measurand, sensor material (the transduction mechanism that converts one energy form to another), cost, modulating principle, transduction principle, output signal. See also the recommendations of the Committee on New Sensor Technologies: Materials and Applications (National Academy Press, 2000). -- JBG]