Semantic Enablers for Next Generation Data Environments:

Environmental and Disaster Data Focus

Deborah L. McGuinnessTetherless World Senior Constellation Chair

Professor of Computer and Cognitive ScienceWeb Science Research Center Director

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

With thanks to the extended RPI Tetherless World Team, particularly Jim McCusker, Katie Chastain, Zach Frye, John Erickson, Rui Yan

April 19, 2013

Open Data Workflow

First Responder Network

THEMES Observatories: Science, Open Government, Health and Life Science, Social

Web Science Research Foundations• Making Data Transparent and Actionable • Provenance• Semantic Methodology• Social Network Analysis• Semantically-Enabled Visualization• Web Data "Challenge Response" Enablers

Social Media: Reasoning on Graph Database

Health and Human Services Data Challenge

International Open Government Data Sets

Rensselaer Tetherless World ConstellationWeb Observatory Foundations & Directions

Multi-Dimensional Data Portals

Semantic eScience Data Portals

First Responder Portal(with NIST)

How do we make First Responders*

Safer and More Effective?

Answer: Leverage Semantic Technologies and Social Media Analysis

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McGuinness, Erickson, McCusker, Chastain, Frye, Yan

* Emergency Medical Personnel, Firefighters, and Police Officers

Social Observatory – First Responder effort (NIST funded)

Social Media use is on the rise. Every day, we write:

294 billion emails2 million blog postsOver 40 Million Tweets*

How can we leverage Social Media sites to gather

requirements for active First Responders?

to identify communities

to identify stakeholders within those First Responder communities?

To identify trends  http://tw.rpi.edu/web/project/FirstResponders

Finding Topics

Finding Users

Semantically-Enabled Environmental and Ecological Monitoring

• Where are pollution events happening?

• What are the health impacts? • How does pollution correlate with

population changes (wildlife, invasives, etc.)?

Semantic Environmental Monitoring (SemantEco)

• Enable/Empower communities (citizens & scientists) to explore pollution sites, facilities, regulations, and health impacts along with provenance

• Connections to USGS, Lake George, IBM, expanding to discussions of predictions and intervention suggestions

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1. Explanation of pollution limits2. Graphing thresholds and trends3. Possible health effect of contaminant (EPA)4. Filtering by facet to select type of data5. Link for reporting problems6. Extended with input from USGS, with

population counts for birds & fish

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McGuinness, Patton, Seyed, Wang, et al.

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Multi-dimensional Semantic Integration and Analysis

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Ex. Questions:- What intervention strategies

correlate with decreased smoking? - By age group, geographic area, etc.

- What scientific topic is emerging in a time period

Semantic Web methodology, accountable mashups, multi-dimensional analysis, aggregation semantics toolsDomain answer: bans and labeling for certain age brackets PopSciGrid with NIH looked at “preventable cancers” , hypothesized contributors (smoking), and interventions – taxation, bans, labeling

McCusker,McGuinness,Lee,Thomas,Courtney,Tatalovich,Contractor,Morgan,Shaikh. Towards Next Generation Health Data Exploration: A Data Cube-based Investigation into Population Statistics for Tobacco, 2013

Multi-dimensional Semantic Analysis work also being developed for the IARPA FUSE (Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition Project

Creating More Accessible Health Data as Open Linked Data

Variety of health questions• What is a good hospital

for my concerns? (by condition, by bounceback, communication, etc.

Semantic Data Environment (Prizms, DataCube Explorer,

• Health and Human Services (HHS) Award winning platform

• Being repurposed for mutations and malignant melanoma data in Melagrid

7Lebo, McCusker, Graves, Gloria, Erickson, Hendler, McGuinness

Ultimately: Community Science

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Extras

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An Example: HawaiiChanges in cigarette use viewed against policy changes

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We link states from year to year to that state across time, adding data for each year.

Semantic Web Observatories

• Web Observatories are emerging in many areas

• Can be leveraged to engage broader types of communities -

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Department of Health and Human Services'                  Developer Challenge

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A group from RPI TWC won first place in the competition, by using semantic technologies and in-house developed software, such as csv2rdf4lod, LODSPeaKr, Farrah and DataFAQS.

Example Workflow (SemantAqua)

Archive

CSV2RDF4LODEnhance

derive derive

integrate archive

Publish

CSV2RDF4LODDirect visualize

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Open Government DataTWC –Intl Open Government Data Sets

First Responder Portal (with NIST):Gather requirements

First Responders can be found via existing social media sites,

then directed to new community portals for more

focused engagement

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McGuinness, Erickson, McCusker, Chastain, Frye, Yan

First Responder Portal (with NIST):Finding Stakeholders and Communities

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Top #wx tweeters

Top #smem tweeters

First Responder Portal (with NIST):Identifying Trends, Topics

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Topics mentioned with #wx

McGuinness, Erickson, McCusker, Chastain, Frye, Yan