Semantic Web Challenge


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Examples This page contains some examples of Semantic Web Applications. Additionally, you find some suggestions about the information sources that can be used and about eligible goals. However, you are free to choose your own application and information sources. Example 1: Disaster Management Use and integrate data from various sources, in various formats to provide actual and accurate support in a disaster situation (e.g. the flood in Germany in August 2002 or the fires in the USA). Possible information sources are: Weather information Maps from geographical information systems News sites Satellite images Goal: The application should be able to provide answers to different queries, e. g. What is likely to happen in the next days? Which cities are not accessible anymore? What public transport services are still running? How many beds are free and in which hospitals? Give route information for ambulances (taking into account blocked roads). Example 2: Personal information Personal information (i.e., Agendas, Address books, Bibliographies, etc.) have several advantages with regards to the Semantic Web: they can be found in great quantities on the Web, they are understood by anyone and can be defined, they have a added great value and they are arbitrarily difficult to find. There is several Semantic Web effort for dealing with those and we can expect them to produce a relevant model of these data in the short term (they currently use pretty standard models for each of these units: vCalendar, vCard and Dublin core are widely agreed and used by many different software. They have the drawback of not being connected). So we can have a solid and useful foundation for the language in which expressing queries and getting answers. The data can be found from everywhere on the web: conference calendar, home pages, phone directories. It suffers the same drawback as the formats above: these are poorly connected. Connecting them is the first step toward adding value. It demonstrates the ability to merge heterogeneous information sources. It also demonstrate the ability to take advantage of the Web. Dealing these PIM data on the Semantic Web can help answering questions like "What is the homepage of this individual?" "What is the phone number of his assistant?" "Will I and he have an opportunity to meet within a month?" ... . In general the question are simple but the mobilized resource to find the answer can be infinite. The semantic part will consist in developping a model of this domain that allows to answer these question by taking advantage of the relationships between these personal information. The relationships involved with this kind of data can be very complex. Think of the following rules: IF workat( x, y ) AND address( y, z ) THEN address( x, z ) IF workat( x, y ) AND addressing-scheme( y, z ) THEN email( x, apply-scheme( x, z )) IF author( x, y ) AND subject( y, s ) THEN work-on( x, s ) Many such rules can be used for deducing information from the one available on the Web or elsewhere. These rules can also take many parameters into account such as the confidence in sources, the confidence in the rule, the result merging policies, etc. These could be added to further elaboration of the challenge. We expect the application presented to the challenge to more professional each year and to become shortly common usage.

Last modified on March 14, 2007

Examples

This page contains some examples of Semantic Web Applications. Additionally, you find some suggestions about the information sources that can be used and about eligible goals. However, you are free to choose your own application and information sources.

Example 1: Disaster Management

Use and integrate data from various sources, in various formats to provide actual and accurate support in a disaster situation (e.g. the flood in Germany in August 2002 or the fires in the USA). Possible information sources are:

Weather information
Maps from geographical information systems
News sites
Satellite images

Goal:

The application should be able to provide answers to different queries, e. g.

What is likely to happen in the next days?
Which cities are not accessible anymore?
What public transport services are still running?
How many beds are free and in which hospitals?
Give route information for ambulances (taking into account blocked roads).

Example 2: Personal information

Personal information (i.e., Agendas, Address books, Bibliographies, etc.) have several advantages with regards to the Semantic Web: they can be found in great quantities on the Web, they are understood by anyone and can be defined, they have a added great value and they are arbitrarily difficult to find.

There is several Semantic Web effort for dealing with those and we can expect them to produce a relevant model of these data in the short term (they currently use pretty standard models for each of these units: vCalendar, vCard and Dublin core are widely agreed and used by many different software. They have the drawback of not being connected). So we can have a solid and useful foundation for the language in which expressing queries and getting answers.

The data can be found from everywhere on the web: conference calendar, home pages, phone directories. It suffers the same drawback as the formats above: these are poorly connected. Connecting them is the first step toward adding value. It demonstrates the ability to merge heterogeneous information sources. It also demonstrate the ability to take advantage of the Web.

Dealing these PIM data on the Semantic Web can help answering questions like

"What is the homepage of this individual?"
"What is the phone number of his assistant?"
"Will I and he have an opportunity to meet within a month?"
...

In general the question are simple but the mobilized resource to find the answer can be infinite. The semantic part will consist in developping a model of this domain that allows to answer these question by taking advantage of the relationships between these personal information.

The relationships involved with this kind of data can be very complex. Think of the following rules:

IF workat( x, y ) AND address( y, z ) THEN address( x, z )
IF workat( x, y ) AND addressing-scheme( y, z )
THEN email( x, apply-scheme( x, z ))
IF author( x, y ) AND subject( y, s )
THEN work-on( x, s )

Many such rules can be used for deducing information from the one available on the Web or elsewhere. These rules can also take many parameters into account such as the confidence in sources, the confidence in the rule, the result merging policies, etc. These could be added to further elaboration of the challenge. We expect the application presented to the challenge to more professional each year and to become shortly common usage.