Semantic Web - EU perspectives

1. Semantic Web - EU perspectives W3C Semantic Web Tour June 2003 Franco MastroddiDG Information Society

2. Investing in ICT research and development “The computer age is everywhere except in the productivity statistics” (Solow, 1987) • Productivity growth in US since 1995 coincides with ICT growth. Not same growth rate in Europe: • the characteristics of European economy • the “dot.com” shake-outs • It is a long-term haul before ICT becomes a general utility comparable with energy or transport networks.

3. Longer-term ICT trends “The world produces between one and two exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth”.(SIMS/ Berkeley, 2000) • ICT today • shrink-wrapped PC configs • Narrow bandwidth • Objects are just objects • Web “dumb, boring and isolated” • Applications “islands” eWork/eGov • Internet users “only” in millions • Tomorrow: Ambient Intelligence? • Self-aware devices, sensors, etc • Broadband, wireless multimedia • Billions of tagged objects • “adaptable, executable, X-Internet” • Seamless interoperability • Internet parallels mass media Sources: Forrester Ceo*, BTExact, NUAInternet, Gartner

4. Some market drivers • Technology: • broadband is taking off (incl. mobile) • more integration between digital devices - new forms of content processing • Markets • information value chain becoming less linear, more “just-in-time”, more distributed • increasing blur between content providers and users (e.g. P2P) • User pull • information overload now at individual level. • systems to be more user-centric / ambient.

5. Content market dynamics

6. Evolving from data and syntax to semantics • Semantic Web roadmap • Web services initiatives worldwide • advanced multimedia processing - e.g. scene analysis • knowledge lifecycle: creating knowledge bases, maintaining them, reasoning on them (in Web environment) • scaleable natural language processing / linguistic analysis to help in annotation • agents, multi-agent frameworks, etc Involves several scientific disciplines, developing new communities of interest.

7. Main challenges • Help overcome information overload • better integrate content and services across different platforms • more advanced querying, searching etc • seek industrial / socio-economic benefits • help promising content technologies to mature: scaleable, robust, cost-effective etc • address issues like cost-benefits and usability • support ever-more complex work processes • be time-critical, collaborative, dynamic • add intelligence e.g. inferencing, reasoning

8. eEurope 2005 • Policy aims for 2005: • modern online public services • e-government, health, learning etc • a dynamic business environment enabled by • widespread availability of broadband access at competitive prices • a secure information infrastructure through e.g. : • policy measures (eg review legislation on e-business) • good practice, benchmarking.

9. IST FP5 Semantic Web technologies (2001) Objective: Focus European RTD on Semantic Web, including on ontology best practice, semantic indexing and analysis, resource and services discovery, semantic-based interfaces / visualisation. Today: over 30 projects involving over 250 research and industry organisations, including: • SWAD-Europe W3C-based outreach project • OntoWeb Thematic Network on ontologies with ca 130 members • pilot applications e.g. on hidden Web, web-based KM, scientific discovery, etc • “extensions” of SWT e.g. towards multimedia, P2P, GRID etc,

10. FP6 - Semantic-based knowledge systems (2002) Objective: RTD should aim to : • develop semantic-based and context-aware systems which can acquire, organise, process, share and use the knowledgeembedded in multimedia content • maximise automation of the complete knowledge lifecycle • achieve semantic interoperability between Web resources and services. Also found in other IST areas such as cross-media content, networked businesses and governments, eLearning, digital culture, cognitive systems...

11. Virtual Information and Knowledge Environments: Semantic Web, Mobile Web, X-Internet etc Documents Databases Email Web People Other Resources Semantic-enabled systems and services Human Human Machine-Machine Knowledge representation and reasoning Knowledge rendering and sharing etc Knowledge extraction

12. Example of application area: adaptive information systems Smart product development. 2000-2002 DecisionCraft Analytics Ltd. Modern DS systems: intelligent, distributed, time-critical, personal... Urban planning Accurately predicting arrival times for aircraft. - NASA - CTAS. Guidelines support

13. RTD approach • Foundational research • mainly via Networks of Excellence • ontology methods, formal languages (eg OWL), models • Component research • mainly through STREPS • annotation, indexing, search engines, visualisation etc • performance, robustness, costs... • System-level research • integration of above, mainly via Integrated Projects • demonstrations and pilot applications • user / market acceptance / impact

14. Call 1 results - preliminary! • Over 120 proposals received for this sector alone, requesting over 450 Meuros • ca 40 Integrated Projects / Networks of Excellence, • involving some 1500 participants from 45 countries • NoEs 30-40 partners 2/3 persons each • on topics including: • Semantic Web technology and applications • advanced multimedia content annotation / data mining e.g. using machine learning • context-aware (mobile) services • semantic search engines (QA dialogue, multimedia) • agent technology, inferencing and reasoning methods.

15. Conclusion • Certain number of ground conditions to be met before the vision can be realised • E.U. can support through: • policy actions e.g. e-Europe • RTD to explore applications, complement W3C • FP5 projects ongoing and FP6 in pipeline • Next steps: • Prepare for Call 2 - now open. • Prepare for 2004-2005 workprogramme. • Further contacts: • franco.mastroddi@cec.eu.int • http://www.ktweb.org

16. Thank you for your attention and stay in touch!