KR Meeting Jan 06

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Logistics

Where: San Antonio, Texas
Hotel: La Mansion del Rio Hotel

When: Jan. 23-26, 2006
Reimbursements: http://lternet-183.lternet.edu/doc_archive/forms/

The meeting will begin promptly at 8:00 am in the El Conde/La Condessa Meeting Room located on the 3rd floor of the hotel. The hotel does not provide shuttle service from San Antonio International Airport to La Mansion del Rio Hotel. You may book SATrans shuttle http://www.saairportshuttle.com/ or take a cab. SATrans is $14 one way, $24 round trip. A cab is $18-$20 one way.

Agenda items

1. Observation ontology (ObsOnt) – Tuesday

Objective: to provide a rigorous framework for annotating ecological data with sufficient resolution for data merging and suggesting potential statistical analysis.
Three sub-model framework (critical evaluation):
1. Observation

Spatial component
Temporal component
Material component
How should taxonomy be integrated? (add a provisional component)

2. Abstraction

Value
Units

3. Context

Association
Mereology
OLAP?

Agree upon basic OO framework before end of meeting

2. Textbook parsing project (PP) – Wednesday afternoon

Objective: to generate an objective graph of relationship among ecological concept (including observation). To be used as a comparative model to aid in ontology building.
Begon et al project

Show various analysis done so far
Ideas for interesting future analyses

Wikipedia project
Developing a glossary (set of terms defined in natural language, including synonyms)
Controlled vocabulary (list of agreed-upon terms)

3. Publications – Thursday afternoon

Objective: to disseminate what we done so far, focusing on ecological aspects of ontology building.

Come up with three (partially overlapping) ideas for papers and divide among participants.

Potential journals:

Ecological Applications, Bioscience (others): Ontology guide for ecologists.
TREE: brief overview of the important role ontologies will play in ecological research (Use boxes for definitions and examples)
Ecol. Lett.: a more detailed review of the constructs that ecologists use subconsciously.
Computer Science Journals(?): More technical details of ecological constructs using description logic
Ontology Journals(?): Comparison and elaboration of an ecological ontology with other types of ontologies; pros, cons and difficulties.

4. Bibliography – Throughout meeting

Objective: to build a bibliography of must-read items current and fundamental to ontologies, and a brief description of why they are important.

The bibliography will form the basis for published literature reviews (above).
Also helps define our view-points/who we agree with as far as ontology building

5. Technology surrounding Ontologies (in Kepler)

What functionality do we need?

External ontologies / ontology repository
Uploading
Editing
Naming Conventions
Organizing Ontologies (file based? clusters?)
Versioning
Navigation/access/searching/interacting ontologies

How to "publish" ontologies
Annotation mechanisms and grain (dataset, attribute or cell level)

6. Units ontology

Objective: Evaluate how to approach unit identification and conversion; extending derived units; relating units ontology to material ontology; how to add new units