Structuring and visualizing microgravity Material Science data in a topic map ontology
Aloïs Grimbach, Philipp Wever, Stephan Schneider, Rainer Willnecker · 2009
Structuring and retrieving information is becoming a more and more challenging task. While classical search engines index data by performing a plain full text search, other approaches like semantic technologies aim at describing coherences among the data and thus refine them to valuable information. Those techniques find their way into the semantic web via new standards allowing interconnecting information on a worldwide scale. One ISO standard technology of expressing implicit knowledge structures constitutes topic maps. Topic maps combine the benefits of graph structures used in conceptual maps with the basic approach of indices. They are extensible, scalable and easily grasped by humans. Thus, they offer a powerful way of navigating large and interconnected knowledge structures. This paper aims at adapting the topic map technology to experiments performed during parabolic flights on the DLR TEMPUS facility between 2003 and 2008. TEMPUS is an electromagnetic levitation facility for containerless processing of metals and semiconductors under microgravity. At DLR-MUSC, data concerning the TEMPUS experiments are structured and stored by using the Werum Hypertest platform. This commercial product was adapted to user requirements and needs and is subsequently further developed. It allows the edition of metadata like sample material, environmental parameters etc. which can also serve as atomic constituents for a domain ontology. By pursuing that approach, the domain knowledge for several experiments is extracted from several information sources and modelled in a topic map ontology. The information resources contained in TEMPUS Hypertest are associated with the topic map. Possibilities of performing that task automatically and thus being able to populate the topic map by connecting the TEMPUS Hypertest database to the topic map ontology are discussed. The information contained in the topic map is visualised via a web application which has been worked out at DLR-MUSC and which is based on the Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS). The quality of the ontology and added value is assessed by internal users. Future possibilities are discussed in the outlook.