Technical Advisory Panel: Latest Monthly Reports

This report is targeted at the Technical Advisory Panel and is updated monthly, or as time allows.      (details)
      Topic links:       Summary   Technical   Management   Upcoming   Concerns  

Summary of Progress

• The ontology repository is significantly enhanced, though still in an evaluation phase.
• Many vocabularies have been moved to the new repository from the previous marinemetadata.org locations.
• The device ontology work is being complemented by involvement in a W3C Incubator Group device ontology effort; Luis Bermudez and John Graybeal were asked to participate in this project as Invited Experts.
• The OGC Oceans Interoperability Experiment (and OOSTethys) began Phase II work, with many additional contributors.
• MMI hosted a meeting of technical leaders in the biodiversity community at the e-biosphere'09 conference.
• MMI hosted a small international working group of vocabulary repository developers to consider possible areas for collaboration.

Technical Updates

For more information, please see technical details at the Monthly Technical Report summary page. For strategic information about each area, see the Technical Team page.

Ontologies and Semantics

Ontology Development: The MMI Device Ontology work has been moving steadily forward, adding to the ontology at nearly every biweekly session. In recent months it has become clear that the W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group activity will integrate considerably more material into their ontology by the end of the year. As Invited Experts on that panel, John Graybeal and Luis Bermudez are identifying paths for collaboration, leading to either integration of the concepts with the MMI ontology, or MMI engagement in and adoption of the W3C ontology.

Semantic Framework: The MMI Ontology Registry and Repository has been significantly enhanced over the last 3 months, and a preliminary version of newly integrated services is available. While the existing BioPortal-based services continue to be available, our new ontology portal provides a new, simpler organization for the capabilities MMI is providing. A considerably enhanced Voc2RDF utility (for converting plain text vocabularies into ontologies) is now available, and a web-based version of VINE, the Vocabulary Integration Environment for term mapping, will shortly be made available as well.

Many challenges have been addressed with these new releases, but many more are being identified. Areas of concern include issues around URIs: working with URNs, ownership, and versioning; federation of information among repositories; aligning multiple publications of a vocabulary; and finding the time and wherewithal to work through these concerns with other busy repository developers.

Vocabularies: A significant number of vocabularies from marinemetadata.org are being migrated to the MMI Ontology Repository, with many more to follow. This is a non-trivial activity, involving getting consent of the originators, identifying newly desired metadata, updating the vocabulary if necessary, and forwarding from the old location to the new. The process also identifies needs for the Repository, as well as challenges interacting with the communities of interest. The appearance of community vocabularies of interest in the repository is expected to be one of its strongest selling points.

Guides

Members of the Guides team contributed significant content for a chapter of a book on coastal atlas interoperability. The Guides team also completed a thorough revision of the glossary, and updated or added several Guides. In particular, a new guide on Meeting NSF Data policy Requirements was published. A new tooltip to provide hover-over glossay definitions was added. The team is currently developing articles drawn from the guides for journal publication.

OOSTethys

Over the past several months the OGC Oceans Interoperability experimtent has been gathering momentum. Task leads have been assigned to the selected focus topics, and work is proceeding in several areas. The project is referenced regularly as an example of viable or best practices for OGC Sensor Observation Services.

Web Site

Although web site improvements continue, this report marks the one-year anniversary of the release of the MMI web site on Drupal, and the site is fully operational with all major issues addressed. Recent significant improvements include a better editor, blogging capabilities, and better support for changing published content. The core infrastructure of the web site has been updated to the latest modules and refactored to make future updates easier.

Workshops

Seeking to develop support for a collaborative workshop among repository developers, MMI hosted a strategy meeting in June, with 5 developers attending. The meeting provided an opportunity to discuss the needs and goals for these systems and their interoperation, but the opinions of participants varied considerably. Further steps are still being evaluated.

DIVE

Low-level planning for DIVE continued, while awaiting resources to continue the work.

Program Management Updates

Please visit our Monthly Management Report summary page for more details on any of these activities.

For strategic information about each area, visit the links at the Program Management page.

Community Engagement and Outreach

MMI hosted a small meeting attended by key technical participants in the biodiversity community. The meeting sought potential collaborative opportunities for vocabulary interoperability in that community. (Follow-on activities, if any, will be determined in consultation with that community.)

MMI continues to engage many organizations, with presentations, project participation, and proposal collaborations.

Strategic Planning

John Graybeal and Luis Bermudez visited NSF over two days in June, discussing MMI and possible funding strategies. Eight of the NSF staff attended a presentation and participated in an extended discussion. A few promising competitive solicitations were identified as a result of the visit.

MMI's proposal (for a vocabulary repository) to NSF's STCI solicitation was turned down, with the suggestion it be submitted to the upcoming INTEROP solicitation. A large number of collaborators provided strong letters of commitment to the activity for STCI, and MMI intends to continue those relationships.

MMI has started a 'futures' team which is meeting regularly to discuss MMI opportunities and strategies.

Staffing

Through subcontracting at MBARI, MMI continues to enjoy the services of Paul Alexander supporting the web site and community repository, and hopes to obtain additional support from another individual in the near future. Additionally, WHOI issued a subcontract for Stephanie Watson's services supporting the semantic web and community vocabularies, which will be tremendously important in coming months.

Upcoming Items of Strategic Import

These are activities, events, and strategic directions that we see coming in the near future.

As always, the funding and proposal activities are receiving considerable attention. As MMI is expecting to be the sum of many parts, we are encouraging development of MMI proposals focused on specific topics, yet with a variety of lead Principal Investigators, distributing the 'ownership' or leadership of the organization as winning proposals are selected.

Our ability to stay on top of semantic web technologies and provide effective services to the marine community will be thoroughly tested in coming months.

The W3C Semantic Sensor Network activity introduces interesting possibilities for collaboration. Others include the freshly funded NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative Cyberinfrastructure project, and the biodiversity and repository development communities.

Concerns

John Graybeal is supporting MMI with his free time at this point (MBARI's internal funds in support of this activity have run out), so this will factor into project planning and other leadership activities, though the most important will be picked up by Carlos and other Principal Investigators as needed.

Other Details About These Reports

To regularly view the latest report, bookmark http://marinemetadata.org/node/22/documents/Monthly+Reports/latest in your browser. To see a summary of all the reports, visit http://marinemetadata.org/views/tapr/all.

The links for the summary pages (the one just mentioned, and the Monthly Technical Report and Monthly Management Activities Report above) will initially point to the most recent reports, rather than to the reports corresponding to that particular Technical Advisory Panel Report. To see a previous report for those areas, enter a different 'Month Year' search pattern and click on submit.