status of agrovoc and related projects

Caterina Caracciolo, FAO

http://www.fao.org/aims/

The AGROVOC Thesaurus and Workbench


Cusco14 May2010



Outline

• FAO & the AGROVOC Thesaurus• Thesaurus refinement• AGROVOC editing tool • AGROVOC community



FAO & the AGROVOC

Thesaurus



FAO



AGROVOC

• A multilingual thesaurus• Some 20 languages • To standardize and organize terminology,

primarily for document indexing

• Coverage: all subject fields in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and related domains (e.g. environment)

• By language: ca 40000 terms EN



EXAMPLE

Hierarchical and non-hierarchical relationship of the term "Maize"



AGROVOC

• Initiative of FAO and CEE (now EU), 1980s • Maintained and updated online by FAO• By language: ca 40000 terms EN• Localized versions maintained by other bodies:

ministries, libraries, research instituteshttp://aims.fao.org/agrovoc/



AGROVOC languages



Some figures of AGROVOC use

• Average hits per day: 5400 • Average downloads per year: 1000 • Origin of online access: about 90 countries

• Who: researchers, librarians, information managers



Applications of AGROVOC

• In library setting: index items with one word (descriptors), retrieve through many (non-descriptors, related or BT/NT terms)

• AGRIS• Multilinguality allows for:• coverage of local environment and issues • searches across languages



Applications of AGROVOC cnt’d

• For data and web site organization: AgriDrupal• inclusion of AGROVOC hierarchies in

content management systems • Network of users• Focal points: CONDESAN, IIT Kanpur



Refinement of AGROVOC

The Agricultural Ontology Service Concept Server

(AOS CS)



Refinement of semantics: the Agricultural Ontology Service

Concept Server (AOS CS)

• Based on AGROVOC • A pool of agricultural concepts, better defined

than in a thesaurus setting • Semantics is refined and made explicit, for

example the non-hierarchical relations



Refined semantics

E.g. generic relationship of relatedness is replaced by more refined relations

• In thesaurus: "pollutants" (RT) "pollution" • With refined semantics:• “pollution” (is-caused-by) “pollutants”



Refined semantics cnt'd MAIZE

UF corn NT flint maize NT popcorn NT sweet corn

MILKNT milk fat NT cow milkRT dairy cattle

Fr Lait

International Fund for Agricultural Development

UF IFAD

MAIZEsynonym cornsuperclass-of flint maize used-to-make popcorn hybridized-into sweet corn MILKingredient milk fat superclass-of cow milk

produced-by dairy cattle has-translation Lait

International Fund for Agricultural Development

acronym IFAD



Refinement of contents

• Expanding coverage by language & environment

• Amazonan biodiversity – IIAP & FAO



Status of AGROVOC CS

• Structure and content• refinement of relations -- OK• “cleaning” of root nodes – OK• Amazonan version – soon

• Format• encoding as SKOS -- July• soon published as Linked data (RDF) -- July



The AGROVOC editing toolThe Workbench (WB)



The Workbench (WB)

• A web-based editing tool for the AGROVOC CS• Functionalities

• collaborative editing, multilingual • editorial workflow• editing rights: from casual user to publisher• term status: proposed/validated/... • validation and consistency check

• V1 release in June• http://202.73.13.50:55234/agrovocdevv10/



Other functionalities

•Allows for inclusion of codes, e.g.– CABI, NAL, interagency 3alpha, FAO taxonomic

•Search, also filtered, e.g. by• string, URI, date, relationships, ...

•Import/Export in other formats • SKOS, RDBMS-SQL

•Statistics/Preferences•RSS feed



Home Page



AGROVOC WB status of work

•Release v1 first week of June •Release v2 end of 2010

• will work natively with SKOS• will include a SPARQL endpoint



AGROVOC user community

•Mailing list: http://dgroups.org/fao/agrovoc• 2007, AGROVOC e-conference of users •Some regional network in place: EU and Philippins

•FAO & IIAP to organize the community of users in South America

status of agrovoc and related projects

Technology