Reengineering Thesauri for New Applications: the AGROVOC Example

Dagobert Soergel, Boris Lauser, Anita Liang, Frehiwot Fisseha, Johannes Keizer and Stephen Katz

Reengineering Thesauri for New Applications: the AGROVOC Example

Year of publication 2004

Pages 23

Author Dagobert Soergel, Boris Lauser, Anita Liang, Frehiwot Fisseha, Johannes Keizer and Stephen Katz

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) Existing classification schemes and thesauri are lacking in well-defined semantics and structural consistency. Empowering end users in searching collections of ever increasing magnitudes with performance far exceeding plain free-text searching (as used in many Web search engines), and developing systems that not only find but also process information for action, requires far more powerful and complex knowledge organization systems (KOSs). The paper presents a conceptual structure and transition procedure to support the shift from a traditional KOS towards a full-fledged and semantically rich KOS. The proposed structure also complies with other interoperability approaches like RDFS and XML in the Web environment. AGROVOC, a traditional thesaurus developed and maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, serves as a case study for exploring the reengineering of a traditional thesaurus into a fully-fledged ontology. We start the process of developing an inventory of specific relationship types with well-defined semantics for the agricultural domain and explore the rules-as-you-go approach to streamlining the reengineering process.

Language English

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From thesauri to Ontologies: A short case study in the food safety area in how ontologies are more powerful than thesauri From thesauri to RDFS to OWL
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This short case study will show on the basis of a simple example taken from the Food Safety area, how ontologies differ from thesauri. The example will start with showing an extract from the AGROVOC thesaurus, and exploring the information that can be extracted from here. We will then develop this example further in order to show growing functionality and expressive power first in RDFS and finally in OWL ontologies.
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This document revises and updates the user requirements for the Fisheries case study (WP7) originally prepared in D7.1.1 (in M7). As highlighted in the introduction (Chapter 1), the purpose of this deliverable, 22 months after the launch of the NeOn project, is to refine the user requirements for the WP7 case study. This refinement of the user requirements is also meant to enhance the alignment of the case study with the NeOn project and better contribute to it as a whole. The user r equirements for the Fisheries ontologies lifecycle management system are presented in Chapter 2. This chapter also includes an updated description of user’s roles and requirements for ontology engineers and ontology editors. The requirements for the FSDAS are revisited in Chapter 3. That chapter covers the general characteristics of the FSDAS (i.e., its scope, perspective, features), the refinement and extension of the functional requirements, its foreseen user types, and a number of u ser interface issues and non-functional requirements. Conclusions are presented in Chapter 4. This deliverable also includes five annexes with additional detailed information. Annex A provides a summary of the requirements presented in Chapter 2, together with their mapping to the NeOn architecture. Annex B traces all changes to requirements, scenarios and uses cases from D7.1.1 until now. Annex C consists of tables that are meant to help the reader trace the changes (modifications /refinements) with respect to the requirements presented in D7.1.1 and D7.5.1. Finally, Annex D and Annex E list the revised use cases and the new use cases for FSDAS respectively.
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From AGROVOC to the Agricultural Ontology Service / Concept Server
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This paper illustrates the conversion from a traditional thesaurus in agriculture (AGROVOC) to a new system, the Agricultural Ontology Service Concept Server (AOS/CS). The Concept Server will serve as a multilingual repository of concepts in the agricultural domain providing ontological relationships and a rich, semantically sound terminology. The Food and Agriculture Organization recently developed the underlying model for this new system in the Web ontology language OWL. In this paper, we desc ribe the purpose of this conversion and the use of OWL and highlight in particular the core features of the developed OWL model. We go on to explain how it evolves and differs from the traditional thesaurus approach.