Ontology: The Need for International Coordination NCOR Inaugural Oct 27, 2005

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OntologyThe Need forInternational
Coordination NCOR Inaugural Oct 27, 2005

• Dr. W. Ceusters
• European Centre for Ontological Research
• Saarland University, Saarbrücken - Germany

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European Centre forOntological Research
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ECORs members partners
External members
Local members
Partners
Status Oct 2, 2005
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Goals and objectives

• sustained and coordinated collaboration with
  institutions with proven track record of
  excellence in ontological research and in the
  application of ontology to solve concrete
  problems.
• interdisciplinary approach based on philosophical
  rigour
• exchange of research personnel for short research
  visits
• participation in joint projects,
• joint supervision of doctoral research,
• joint production of software and authorship of
  research papers
• collaborate in seeking funding at national and
  international levels for ontology-related
  research and development activities

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Similar Centers

• Created
• Interdisciplinary Ontology forum
  Japan
• NCOR
• Considered
• Canadian Centre for Ontological Research
• Australasian Ontology Center

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Europe cross-bordercoordination is in our genes

• Flanders a wealth of dialects
• About 850 for a population of 6,000,000
• Belgium population 10,000,000
• 3 communities French, Flemish, German
• 3 regions Flanders, Wallony, Brussels
• 6 governments
• Europe
• 25 countries
• Many more regions, some cross-national
• Flanders, Basque country, Occitania, ...

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European Member States
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Permanent cross-border awareness

• Variations in legislation
• What is forbidden in one jurisdiction, might be
  allowed in a second one, and mandatory in a third
  one.
• Variations in culture and habits
• Biggest incentive
• No cross-border issue, no money !
• Biggest source of (research) funding EU
• Requirement for EU-funding
• Europe-wide problem
• Problem cannot be solved by one Member State

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Reasons for coordination in general

• Avoid waste of financial resources and efforts
• Pro
• Division of labor
• Roadmap for future developments
• Contra
• Additional overhead
• Sharing of resources
• But competition is a good driver for quality
• Benchmarking, quality assurance

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Coordination needs and opportunities for Ontology

• Horizontal
• Ontology languages
• We asked for one, but did we ask for OWL ?
• Terminologies, concept systems, ontologies
• The Syntactic Web
• Ontology-based applications
• Vertical
• Healthcare Life Sciences
• Finance
• Legal
• Globalisation

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Current US GOV eHealth goals strategies

• G1 Inform Clinical Practice
• S1. Provide incentives for EHR adoption.
• S2. Reduce risk of EHR investment.
• S3. Promote EHR diffusion in rural and
  underserved areas.
• G2 Interconnect Clinicians.
• S1. Regional collaborations.
• S2. Develop a national health information
  network.
• S3. Coordinate federal health information
  systems.
• Goal 3 Personalize Care.
• S1. Encourage use of Personal Health Records.
• S2. Enhance informed consumer choice.
• S3. Promote use of telehealth systems.
• Goal 4 Improve Population Health.
• S1. Unify public health surveillance
  architectures.
• S2. Streamline quality and health status
  monitoring.
• S3. Accelerate research and dissemination of
  evidence.

US Department of Health and Human Services July
21, 2004
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UMLS Semantic Network
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Main problems with eHealthontologies

• Internal and external (in)consistency
• What do the terms in a terminology stand for ?
• meaning is context
• The biggest defenders are
• Those who build them
• Those who never studied them
• Lobbying for mandatory use

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Terminologies, concept systems, ontologies
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Current mainstream thinking
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The ultimate eHealth scenario
Ontology
continuant
disorder
person
CAG repeat
EHR
Juvenile HD
IUI-1 affects IUI-2 IUI-3 affects
IUI-2 IUI-1 causes IUI-3
Referent Tracking Database
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International Virtual Observatory Alliance

• development and deployment of
  technology to enable international
  utilization of astronomical archives
• Created 2002
• By January 2005 funded participation from 15
  countries (20 million)
• Collaborative efforts in
• XML data format standards VO Resource
  Registries
• VO Resource Metadata VO Query Language
• Universal Content Descriptions Space-Time
  Coordinate Metadata
• unified Data Access Layer standards for spectra
  and images,
• unified astronomical Data Models
• Web Service technologies for the VO.

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International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions

• 1998 Functional Requirements for
  Bibliographic Records
• Delineates the functions performed by
  the bibliographic record wrt various media,
  applications, and user needs.
• Provides a clear precisely stated, and commonly
  shared understanding of what it is that the
  bibliographic record aims to provide information
  about, and what it is that we expect the record
  to achieve in terms of answering user needs.
• May 2005 meeting of the FRBR Review Group
• It is accepted that the FRBR model would benefit
  from an ontology, and it is acknowledged by the
  FRBR Review Group that the FRBR/CRM Harmonization
  Group is going in that direction.

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IFLA-FRBR entities

• Group 1 entities user interests in intellectual
  or artistic products
• Work a distinct intellectual or artistic
  creation
• Expression its intellectual or artistic
  realization
• Manifestation the physical embodiment of an
  expression of a work
• Item a single exemplar of a manifestation
• Group 2 entities are responsible for content,
  production, ..., of group 1 entities.
• Person an individual
• Corporate body an organization or group of
  individuals and/or organizations
• Group 3 entities serve as the subjects of works.
  
• Concept an abstract notion or idea
• Object a material thing
• Event an action or occurrence
• Place a location

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Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations

• Established ontologies
• AGROVOC
• Food Safety and Animal Health Ontology
• Fishery ontology
• Ontology for indexing FAOs Food, Nutrition and
  Agriculture (FNA) journal
• Many other topics still untouched
• Practical implementations of the above not yet
  realised

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Fisheries Global Information System
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FIGIS budget issues
FAO Council, Rome, 20 - 25 June 2005. Summary
Programme of Work and Budget 2006-07
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Recommendations of Committee I of the 11th UN
Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
on money laundering (April 2005)

• Establish mechanisms at national, regional and
  international level to improve data collection on
  economic and financial crimes
• Improve the global legal framework to counter
  economic and financial crimes
• Provide effective technical assistance to
  developing countries to improve their capacity to
  confront the problem
• Agree on measures to improve cooperation between
  government and private sector in preventing such
  crimes
• Identify effective measures to curb
  money-laundering in countries where participation
  in the "formal" financial system is low,
  including in the areas of research, training,
  skills development, technical assistance
  programmes and regional and international
  cooperation.

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Other topics

• Internet (financial) fraud detection and
  prevention
• Electronic payments
• V.A.T. in international transactions
• Freight and transport
• (Bio-)terrorism
• Future Force
• Economic development
• The High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of
  the Poor, a new independent global initiative,
  announced it will fight global poverty by
  focusing on the connection between poverty and
  the lack of legal protections.

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Non-technical aspects

• International legal framework for ontology-
• development IPR
• use
• responsability in case of mistakes
• national security
• Public involvement
• Market driven versus social or cultural
  well-being
• Funding
• combining sources
• Cross-nation governmental national funding for
  participation in global initiative
• Mixed governmental / industry InnoMed

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Tasks in international coordination

• Identify relevant national contact points
• Identify relevant international cross-sectorial
  organisations
• Organise planning meetings for
• Common research agenda
• Promotion
• Identify waste of resources by lack of ontology
• Identify success cases
• Collection and dissemination of information
• Policy on what should be disseminated
• Provide support for
• technical and (pre-)investment studies
• Pilot projects implementations
• Monitoring of its own functioning

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But overall bring clarity !
This is truly ... a
silver car
an image of