Semantically Enabled Knowledge Representation of Metamorphic Petrology Data

1. IN51A-1685 Semantically Enabled Knowledge Representation of Metamorphic Petrology Data Patrick West1 (westp@rpi.edu), Peter Fox1(pfox@cs.rpi.edu), Frank Spear2 (spearf@rpi.edu), Sibel Adali3(sibel@cs.rpi.edu), Cam Le Nguyen1(nguyec6@rpi.edu), Benjamin Hallett2(benwhallett@gmail.com), L. K.S. Horkley2(horkll@rpi.edu) (1Tetherless World Constellation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th St., Troy, NY, 12180 United States) (2Earth and Environmental Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th St., Troy, NY, 12180 United States) (3Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th St., Troy, NY, 12180 United States) Abstract More and more metamorphic petrology data is being collected around the world, and is now being organized together into different virtual data portals by means of virtual organizations. For example, there is the virtual data portal Petrological Database (PetDB, http://www.petdb.org) of the Ocean Floor that is organizing scientific information about geochemical data of ocean floor igneous and metamorphic rocks; and also The Metamorphic Petrology Database (MetPetDB, http://metpetdb.rpi.edu) that is being created by a global community of metamorphic petrologists in collaboration with software engineers and data managers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The current focus is to provide the ability for scientists and researchers to register their data and search the databases for information regarding sample collections. What we present here is the next step in evolution of the MetPetDB portal, utilizing semantically enabled features such as discovery, data casting, faceted search, knowledge representation, and linked data as well as organizing information about the community and collaboration within the virtual community itself. We take the information that is currently represented in a relational database and make it available through web services, SPARQL endpoints, semantic and triple-stores where inferencingis enabled. We will be leveraging research that has taken place in virtual observatories, such as the Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO) and the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO); vocabulary work done in various communities such as Observations and Measurements (ISO 19156), FOAF (Friend of a Friend), Bibo (Bibliography Ontology), and domain specific ontologies; enabling provenance traces of samples and subsamples using the different provenance ontologies; and providing the much needed linking of data from the various research organizations into a common, collaborative virtual observatory. In addition to better representing and presenting the actual data, we also look to organize and represent the knowledge information and expertise behind the data. Domain experts hold a lot of knowledge in their minds, in their presentations and publications, and elsewhere. Not only is this a technical issue, this is also a social issue in that we need to be able to encourage the domain experts to share their knowledge in a way that can be searched and queried over. With this additional focus in MetPetDB the site can be used more efficiently by other domain experts, but can also be utilized by non-specialists as well in order to educate people of the importance of the work being done as well as enable future domain experts. Content can be generated using queries from multiple locations. For example, the VSTO 3.0 data portal, currently being developed, is using query and XSLT files from its own repository and the Tetherless World Constellation repository of query files and xslt files. Acknowledgments: Sponsors: Tetherless World Constellation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Glossary: CMS– Content Management System FOAF - Friend of a Friend MetPetDB – Metamorphic Petrology Data Base OWL – Web Ontology Language RDFs – Resource Description Framework Schema RDFa – Resource Description Framework Attributes RPI/TWC – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute / Tetherless World Constellation XSL– Extensible Stylesheet Language VSTO – Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory