SWAT (Semantic Web Authoring Tool)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Computer Science
Abstract
During the last decade the Semantic Web community has established basic standards for representing data and the conceptual systems (ontologies) through which they are defined. However, encoding information in these formalisms (OWL, RDF) remains a technically difficult task. Widespread adoption of these technologies (with their important potential benefits) would be facilitated if transparent interfaces to the technical formalisms were available.The project aims to show that metadata in OWL and RDF can be viewed and authored through computer-generated presentations in natural languages (e.g., English). The crucial step theoretically will be to develop a model for systemmatically mapping logical concepts and relations to phrase patterns in natural language. The practical challenge will be to develop a tool through which ontology developers can specify this mapping, without deploying deep knowledge of ontologies or grammars. This tool will draw on existing wide-coverage linguistic resources, so that developers can select from a range of pre-coded patterns rather than having to define new ones. If successful, the project would provide an innovative solution to an urgent and commercially relevant problem (as shown by the letters from our collaborators). The main partners are leading UK experts in the theory and practical application of ontologies (Manchester University), and the design of easily-used tools for knowledge-editing based on generated text (Open University).
Publications
Alan Rector (Author)
(2011)
OntoVerbal-M: a Multilingual Verbaliser for SNOMED CT
Allan Third (Author)
Explaining Justifications in OWL DL Ontologies
Allan Third (Author)
(2011)
Levels of organisation in ontology verbalisation
Allan Third (Author)
"Hidden semantics": what can we learn from the names in an ontology?
Allan Third (Author)
(2010)
Expressing OWL axioms by English sentences: dubious in theory, feasible in practice
Donia Scott (Author)
(2011)
Unlocking Medical Ontologies for Non-Ontology Experts
Donia Scott (Author)
(2009)
Editing OWL through generated CNL
Liang S
(2011)
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Marcus Miller (Author)
(2012)
Manchester Family History Advanced OWL Tutorial
Paul Piweck (Author)
(2011)
Justification Patterns for OWL DL Ontologies. Technical Report TR2011-07
Richard Power (Author)
OWL Simplified English: a finite-state language for ontology editing
Richard Power (Author)
Towards a Generation-Based Semantic Web Authoring Tool
Richard Power (Author)
Complexity assumptions in ontology verbalisation
Richard Power (Author)
(2010)
Grouping axioms for more coherent ontology descriptions
Richard Power (Author)
Expressing OWL axioms by English sentences: dubious in theory, feasible in practice
Richard Power (Author)
(2011)
Levels of organisation in ontology verbalisation
Richard Power (Author)
(2011)
Justification Patterns for OWL DL Ontologies. Technical Report TR2011-06
Richard Power (Author)
(2011)
OWL to English: a tool for generating organised easily-navigated hypertexts from ontologies
Richard Power (Author)
(2011)
Coherence relations in ontologies
Richard Power (Author)
Deriving rhetorical relationships from semantic content
Robert Stevens (Author)
(2011)
OntoVerbal-M: a Multilingual Verbaliser for SNOMED CT
Sandra Williams (Author)
Levels of organisation in ontology verbalisation
Sandra Williams (Author)
(2012)
Measuring the understandability of deduction rules for OWL
Sandra Williams (Author)
Generating mathematical word problems
| Description | We found that natural language definitions for a class or concept in an ontology could be generated using only the logical description of that class. We took the approach of a natural language generator that was general to any ontology, rather than one that was crafted to a particular domain of interest or style of logical expression. In doing so, we made some compromises in quality of natural language, in favour of this generic approach. The "paragraphs" of generated natural language are unordered and, while each sentence is of reasonable quality, the whole paragraph is not necessarily so readable. To address this issue, we used Rhetorical structure theory to map types of logical expression to rhetorical roles and thus were able to impose an ordering on the sentences in the generated paragraphs that made them much more acceptable. We applied the software developed in this project to ontologies from both biology and health and in English and mandarin. |
| Exploitation Route | Now we can automatically generate coherent natural language from any logic based OWL ontology, we can also create natural language definitions for ontology classes and these can be used by both ontology developers and ontology users for easier access, comprehension and checking of the ontology's content. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology,Other |
| Description | Impact Acceleration Account Concept and Feasibility Study Scheme AVanT: Automotive Vocabularies and Terminologies 'Project' |
| Amount | £30,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | IAA 033 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2014 |
| End | 08/2014 |
| Description | Impact Acceleration Account Relationship Incubator Scheme: SnapOn Semantics project |
| Amount | £4,356 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | IAA 017 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2013 |
| End | 09/2013 |
| Description | Knowledge Transfer Partnership: Telematicus and SnapOn |
| Amount | £170,977 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | Partnership ID: 1013855 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2015 |
| End | 08/2017 |
| Description | What If |
| Amount | £311,211 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/J014176/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2012 |
| End | 06/2016 |
| Description | SWAT (Semantic Web Authoring Tool) |
| Organisation | EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL - EBI) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with James Malone at European BioInformatics Institute, Cambridge, UK on two papers |
| Start Year | 2010 |
| Description | SWAT (Semantic Web Authoring Tool) |
| Organisation | University of Aberdeen |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Richard Power invited to join the advisory board of the EPSRC-funded WhatIf project (University of Aberdeen and Manchester EP/J014176/1). |
| Start Year | 2012 |