CyberInfrastructure for Geography?CyberInfrastructure for Geography?
Mark GaheganMark Gahegan
GeoVISTA Center, Department of GeographyThe Pennsylvania State University, USA
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Four example cyber-projectsFour example cyber-projects
The Geosciences Network (GEON): www.geongrid.org
Human Environment Regional Observatories (HERO): www.hero.psu.edu
Learning Activities in Digital Libraries: www.dialogplus.org
Archaeometry:
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
CyberInfrastructure for WHOM?CyberInfrastructure for WHOM?
• Geography community is very diverse:• For example, 2007 AAG meeting:
– 68 specialty meetings
– 60 concurrent sessions
– 4000+ talks
• …can a cyberinfrastructure span geography?• …how do we make it relevant to diverse a
community?
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
CyberInfrastructure for WHAT?CyberInfrastructure for WHAT?
• Distributed, high performance computing?• Discover, gain access to, distributed resources?• Shared tools and methods (analysis
environment)?• An archive / repository for data?• A distributed collaboratory?• Crisis / disaster planning, support, mitigation?• A set of educational services and activities?
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
CyberInfrastructure: The GEON GRIDCyberInfrastructure: The GEON GRID
Compute cluster
1TF cluster
Livermore
PoP node
Data Cluster Partner services
USGS
GeologicalSurvey ofCanada
ESRI
KGS
Partner Projects
Chronos
CUAHSI
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Representing living knowledgeRepresenting living knowledge
• “Knowledge keeps no better than fish”-- Alfred North Whitehead
• “You cannot put your foot in the same stream twice”
-- Heraclitus
• “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.”
-- Richard Feynman
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Where does meaning come from?Where does meaning come from?
• Domain understanding / theory (ontology)• The way things are done (epistemology)
– How are resources created and used (work practices / situations)?
• Negotiation among the community of users (social network, group cognition)
• We ‘know’ things in many ways:– Theoretical, Experiential, Procedural
• i.e. the interplay of top-down and bottom-up knowledge played out in private and social situations
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Knowledge Goals of Cyber-InfrastructureKnowledge Goals of Cyber-Infrastructure
• Help communities of researchers and educators to do better science by sharing their resources: computing power, data, tools, models, protocols, results
• BUT…Making resources available is not the same as making them useful to others– Can we also share meaning?
• Litmus tests: – Can we remember what we did?– Will future generations of scientists be able to follow our
work?
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
“Knowledge soup” – Sowa, 2002“Knowledge soup” – Sowa, 2002
Little round planet in a big universe,Sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed.It depends what you look at obviously…But even more, it depends on the way that you see.
(Bruce Cockburn: “Child of the Wind”, 1994)
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)
What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Remembering situations of useRemembering situations of use
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Creation Application Represented by
Who did it? Who should use it? Collections of people
Where was it made? Where does it apply? Collections of sites / scales
When was it made? When does it apply? Collections of temporal intervals
How was it made? How should it be used? Collections of methods and data
Why was it made? Why should it be used? Collections of research questions, motivations, theories
SituationsSituations
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)
What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Situating e-resources in the knowledge nexus
Situating e-resources in the knowledge nexus
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Perspectives as filtersPerspectives as filters
Perspectives filter an information space according to particular situations. Perspectives A and B preferentially select different types of resources and relations; the ability to view perspectives can show how someone else made sense of a given set of resources.
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Four perspectives on a “seismic velocity” concept (red node). a) Intensional concept structure. b) A task that describes how seismic velocity can be measured. c) A social network built around users of the concept. d) Data resources that have been used to describe seismic velocity.
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Concept use and evolutionConcept use and evolution
Evolution of “Depositional environment” concept through use by different researchers over time, progressing from upper left to lower right.
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
ConceptVista: What to represent?ConceptVista: What to represent?
• Basic types – Geon Themes: – Resources:– Methods:– Personnel:– Institutions:– Articles:– …
• Styling…
• Perspectives…
• Situations…
• Connections to web resources
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Perspectives for GEONPerspectives for GEON
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Navigating through conceptual universesNavigating through conceptual universes
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Combining perspectives: e.g. GEON institutions, publications and personnelCombining perspectives: e.g. GEON institutions, publications and personnel
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
Navigation strategiesNavigation strategies
Styling independently serializable (OGCs SLD)
Expand/collapse remove or expand detail
Locality limit the depth of expansion
Perspectives visualized using SLD
Query linking to other resourcesUsing a variety of ‘nym’ options
GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing
SummarySummary
• Rich, Living Knowledge– “Knowledge keeps no better than fish”
-- Alfred North Whitehead
– “You cannot put your foot in the same stream twice”-- Heraclitus
– “…So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.” -- Richard Feynman
• Perspectives allow scientists to ‘describe what they know’ onto shared ontological resources.
• Irony of Ontology is that ontologically-based languages can be used to represent its obverse—Epistemology.