A core concept in geoscience/physical science research is the concept of transport. We present an ontology design pattern for the notion of transport in the geosciences using natural language coupled with a concept map. The top level concepts of the Transport Pattern are transport entity, transport mechanism, and transport event. These concepts are described in detail, and a brief example is provided to illustrate the usefulness of the pattern.
The Semantic Transport ODP is designed to be compatible with other ODPs
generated during the GeoVoCamp8 series of workshops. Previous workshops
focused on a range of geo-spatial topics from cartographic map scaling [
The Semantic Transport pattern is also conceptually related to the proposed
Move ontology design pattern9 that is derived from the CIDOC model [
In this section we present the core elements of the Semantic Transport pattern, and describe how it can be extended to cover two di erent types of transport: active and passive. We focus on applying the Semantic Transport ODP in the context of physical systems, though it may also be useful for other domains, e.g. describing cultural transmission. 2.1
The Semantic Transport pattern consists of three core concepts: Event, Entity, and Mechanism (see Manchester OWL syntax following this paragraph). The TransportEvent acts as the top level concept for the pattern. A TransportEvent describes a speci c transport phenomenon, as movement of some mass or energy (measurable entity) from one location to another, based on a common and persistent frame of reference. Induction of the mass or energy movement can arise from the transported entity itself, or from external sources. The TransportEvent thus has two main parts, TransportEntity and TransportMechanism. The TransportEntity concept represents the identity of the circumscribed portion of energy or mass that is moved. The TransportMechanism concept captures the nature of the source that acts upon the TransportEntity, and thus induces a TransportEvent.
8 http://vocamp.org/wiki/GeoVoCampSB2013 9 http://ontologydesignpatterns.org/wiki/Submissions:Move
The TransportEvent has one top level property, the referenceFrame (see Manchester OWL syntax following this paragraph). The referenceFrame provides context to the pattern by specifying spatial and temporal qualities of any associated observations via the speci cation of time and location information associated with the TransportEvent. As time and location can be xed or relative, abstracting the property types serves to facilitate semantic interoperability between disparate data entities.
It is worth noting that even if the transported entities were to return somehow to their exact place of departure, they still participated in a TransportEvent, even if their initial and nal locations result in no net change in location. 2.2
Figure 1 illustrates the Semantic Transport pattern along with a few logical extensions to illustrate how the pattern might be used. The pattern constructs are depicted in gure 1 using black text in translucent shapes. Further, all classes in the gure are represented using an oval, and each square box delineates a property. In most cases there will be interest in a more speci c description of the event. These additional aspects are accommodated by extending the pattern through subclassing of the existing TransportMechanism and TransportEntity concepts, while adding properties to the referenceFrame (Figure 1). These additional pragmatic components are included in gure 1. Class symbols with red text are examples of the nomenclature that may be used as a TransportMechanism. Sub-properties with blue text illustrate examples of modules that may be described as part of the constructs comprising the referenceFrame.
The TransportMechanism can be usefully subclassed into specialised topics,
such as in the case of involving disjoint classes such as PassiveTransport and
ActiveTransport. Classic examples of PassiveTransport include, e.g. di usion or
osmosis, while ActiveTransport would include, e.g. ATP pumps or air travel [
The referenceFrame is a non-trivial property. Geoscience phenomena often
exhibit unique statistical signatures as mechanical, chemical, and biological
processes work in tandem, or asynchronously, through time as they tend toward
equilibrium [
Further, an observation (as it relates to the referenceFrame in gure 1) is
considered semantically equivalent to other well established geoscience
explications, namely the observation entities associated with the Sensor Observation
Service10 (SOS) and the Geography Markup Language11 (GML), as well as the
concept of a \ x" in the Semantic Trajectory pattern [
Of course, further subclassing will likely be necessary for this pattern to connect, and be useful, to much of the disparate data available to geoscientists. The current framework is complete and extendable. By creating logical semantic equivalences to constructs already used throughout the domain, the Semantic Transport pattern can be a powerful module when mining and ltering large data stores. 3
In this paper we presented an ontology design pattern to describe transport phenomena. The core Semantic Transport ODP is deliberately simpli ed to essential elements, to be applicable to a wide range of use cases in the physical sciences. We described how the Transport pattern can be extended for Active and Passive transport and illustrate brie y how it might be used to interoperate over large disparate geoscience data. 10 http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sos 11 http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml
Next steps will involve how the ODP can be lled out to describe data for a variety of use cases, as well as application and usability testing. An important future extension to the pattern for application to the physical sciences will include explicating the relationship between concepts such as system and energy input (in terms of entropy of the system).