UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 1 Using the Semantic Web to Support Ecoinformatics Andriy Parafiynyk University of Maryland, Baltimore County Support-Ecoinformatics Joint work with Tim Finin, Joel Sachs, Cynthia Sims Parr, Rong Pan, Lushan Han, Li Ding (UMBC), Allan Hollander (UCD), David Wang (UMCP)  This research was supported by NSF ITR and matching funds received from USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 2 Invasive Species Invasive species cost the U.S. economy over $138 billion per year [1]. By various estimates, these species contribute to the decline of 35 to 46 percent of U.S. endangered and threatened species The invasive species problem is growing, as the number of pathways of invasion increases. [1] Pimental et al Environmental and economic costs associated with non-indigenous species in the United States. Bioscience 50: [2] Charles Groat, Director U.S. Geological Survey,

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 3 Currently most common ways of dealing with data among biologists: Journal articles Excel spreadsheets Local databases Some information is on-line in HTML/XML

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 4 Semantic Web can offer: Ontologies to arrive to a common vocabulary and define exactly what is what across disciplines (multiple ontologies with mappings possible) Constant on-line data availability with convenient ways of data acquisition and processing Data discovery (Swoogle) Data integration from different sources, queries on data from multiple sources Expanding the knowledge base by inferencing Data can be easily updated or added, users notified

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 5 Collect data OR Find data tables in literature or data registry OR author of data Massage data manually Write up metadata record Register dataset with data registry Start over for next project Run analyses Publish paper Post supplemental data file on web Create local spreadsheet Build automatically updating dynamic dataset Develop intelligent query for semantic web data Download to local spreadsheet Run analyses Publish paper Reanalyze using latest dataset (Query and data already publicly available)

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 6 An NSF ITR collaborative project with University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of Maryland, College Park U. Of California, Davis Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory An NSF ITR collaborative project with University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of Maryland, College Park U. Of California, Davis Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 7 Food Webs A food web models the trophic (feeding) relationships between organisms in an ecology –Food web simulators are used to explore the consequences of changes in the ecology, such as the introduction or removal of a species –A locations food web is usually constructed from studies of the frequencies of the species found there and the known trophic relations among them. Goal: automatically construct a food web for a new location using existing data and knowledge ELVIS: Ecosystem Location Visualization and Information System

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 8 East River Valley Trophic Web

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 9 Species List Constructor Click a county, get a species list

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 10 The problem We know which species exist in the location and can further restrict and fill in with other ecological models But we don’t know which of them might be eaten by a potential invasive, or which might eat the invasive We can reason from taxonomic data (similar species) and known natural history data (size, mass, habitat, etc.) to fill in the gaps.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 11 Food Web Constructor Predict food web links using database and taxonomic reasoning. In an new estuary, Nile Tilapia could compete with ostracods (green) to eat algae. Predators (red) and prey (blue) of ostracods may be affected

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 12 Evidence Provider Examine evidence for predicted links.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 13 ELVIS Final goal: ELVIS (Ecosystem Location Visualization and Information System) as an integrated set of web services for constructing food webs for a given location.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 14 Background Ontologies SpireEcoConcepts: – confirmed and potential food web links – bibliographic information of food web studies – ecosystem terms – taxonomic ranks California Wildlife Habitat Relationships Ontology – life history – geographic range – management information ETHAN (Evolutionary Trees and Natural History) Concepts and properties for ‘natural history’ information on species derived from data in the Animal diversity web and other taxonomic sources

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 15 Data representation: ETHAN Ontology ethan_animals.owl: phylogenetic information about organisms ethan_keywords.owl: geographic range, habitats, physical description, trophic information, reproduction, lifespan, behavioral information, conservation Status Information in triples: –“Esox lucius” is a subclass of “Esox” –“Esox lucius” has max mass “1.4 kg” –“Esox” eats “Actinopterygii”

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 16 Using ETHAN and OWL inferencing to predict success of invasive species Known food web links: rabbit eats carrot What about hare? Yes with high probability since both are subclasses of the same class in taxonomic hierarchy, have same habitat etc yummy!!! yummy???

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 17 Running since summer M RDF docs, 320M triples, 10K ontologies, 15K namespaces, 1.3M classes, 175K properties, 43M instances, 600 registered users Running since summer M RDF docs, 320M triples, 10K ontologies, 15K namespaces, 1.3M classes, 175K properties, 43M instances, 600 registered users

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 18 Applications and use cases Supporting Semantic Web developers –Ontology designers, vocabulary discovery, who’s using my ontologies or data?, use analysis, errors, statistics, etc. Searching specialized collections –Spire: aggregating observations and data from biologists –InferenceWeb: searching over and enhancing proofs –SemNews: Text Meaning of news stories Supporting Semantic Web tools –Triple shop: finding data for SPARQL queries 1 2 3

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 19 Search for ontologies which contain this terms 1

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland ontologies were found that had these two terms By default, ontologies are ordered by their ‘popularity’, but they can also be ordered by date or size.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 21 We can also search for any RDF documents containing these terms

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 22 5,378 documents were found that had these two terms

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 23 UMBC Triple Shop Finding datasets in the absence of the FROM clause Constraints by URI domain or namespace (more coming) Reasoning (none/rdfs/owl) Dataset persistence: queries and results can be saved, tagged, annotated, shared, searched for, etc. 32

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland leaving out the FROM clause What are body masses of fishes that eat fishes? Swoogle Triple Shop

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 25 specify dataset

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 26 RDF documents were found that might have useful data

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 27 We’ll select them all and add them to the current dataset.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 28 We’ll run the query against this dataset to see if the results are as expected.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 29 The results can be produced in any of several formats

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 30 Results

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 31 Looks like a useful dataset. Let’s save it and also materialize it the TS triple store.

UMBC an Honors University in Maryland 32 Contributions OWL ontologies for ecoinformatics domain – data representation – data sharing – inferencing OWL data discovery Ability to automatically construct datasets relevant to the query Dataset storage/sharing