Semantic Grid Tools for Rural Policy Development and Appraisal
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Aberdeen
Department Name: Computing Science
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Reid R
(2010)
ourSpaces
Reid R
(2009)
ourSpaces - a social semantic web environment for eScience
in AAAI spring symposium on social semantic web : where web 2.0 meets web 3.0
Procter R
(2006)
The National Centre for e-Social Science
in UK e-Science all hands meeting
Polhill J G
(2007)
Evaluating a prototype self-description feature in an agent-based model of land use change
in 4th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association : interdisciplinary approaches to the simulation of social phenomena
Polhill J G
(2007)
A semantic grid service for experimentation with an agent-based model of land-use change
in Journal of artificial societies and social simulation
Polhill J
(2009)
Ontologies for transparent integrated human-natural system modelling
in Landscape Ecology
Pignotti E
(2007)
Semantic workflow management for e-Social science
in 3rd International conference on e-Social science
Pignotti E
(2011)
Enhancing workflow with a semantic description of scientific intent
in Journal of Web Semantics
Philip L
(2007)
Data provenance, evidence-based policy assessment, and e-Social science
in 3rd International conference on e-Social science
| Description | Many social scientists engage with policy-making, producing data to be used by those who develop and review policy or as the evaluators or critics of particular policy interventions. The PolicyGrid project investigated how Semantic Web technologies could be employed to develop a software infrastructure to assist researchers involved in aspects of evidence-based policy research. Outcomes of the work included: - a prototype Web-based environment (ourSpaces) designed to support management of research resources and activities - a novel metadata framework able to capture the provenance (audit trail) of research outcomes to be used as evidence - a mechanism to allow social simulation experiments (workflows) to be annotated with goals and constraints - to aid workflow execution and enhance transparency of results - a natural language generation tool to support users in accessing RDF metadata. |
| Exploitation Route | The software tools have potential in a range of non-academic contexts, as do the various ontologies developed to support the provenance model. Outputs of the project could be exploited in a number of ways; perhaps the most obvious of these would be use of the provenance framework in different contexts requiring audit/compliance trails to be captured. Others include use of the natural language generation toolkit in software applications employing Semantic Web metadata, and development of enhanced simulation models able to document experimental outcomes more fully. Finally, the ourSpaces virtual research environment has been designed to be deployed across a range of projects and thus could be exploited by users for their own applications. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Security and Diplomacy,Transport |
| Description | The nature of the project funding, with its focus on eSocial Science meant that our emphasis was always on academic researchers and tools to support them. However, through partnerships with a number of external stakeholders, there may be scope for non-academic impacts in the future. This includes policy makers and the wider evidence-based policy agenda. UPDATE October 2014 See comments under the continuation project - PolicyGrid-II (ES/F029713/1) |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Environment,Transport |
| Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | Behaviour for well-being, environment and life (BE-WEL) |
| Amount | £199,918 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ES/G033447/1 |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2009 |
| End | 09/2010 |
| Description | PolicyGrid II : supporting interdisciplinary evidence bases for scientific collaboration and policy making |
| Amount | £874,262 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ES/F029713/1 |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2009 |
| End | 08/2012 |
| Description | SwarmCloud |
| Amount | £33,422 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ECS/506-364112 |
| Organisation | University of Westminster |
| Department | JISC-ENGAGE |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2008 |
| End | 05/2009 |
| Description | eInfrastructure for the social sciences |
| Amount | £558,363 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | RES-149-25-1063 |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2006 |
| End | 12/2009 |
| Description | Collaboration with RELU data support service |
| Organisation | Government of the UK |
| Department | UK Data Archive |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | PolicyGrid researchers attended meetings, shared information on ontologies, software tools. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collaboration between Veerle Van den Eynden (RELU Data Support Service, UK Data Archive) and PolicyGrid project. Veerle contributed expertise on archiving requirements for RELU projects and worked with us to tailor the metadata infrastructure and tools within the ourSpaces VRE to ensure a trouble-free export route from ourSpaces to the UK Data Archive. |
| Impact | The major outcome of this collaboration was to ensure that tools within the ourSpaces VRE were able to export research outcomes (and their supporting metadata) in a form that was compatible with the UK Data Archive. This was tested using the RELU eColi O157 project. |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Description | Computing science and human geography |
| Organisation | University of Aberdeen |
| Department | Department of Geography and Environment |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Funding to support this project helped to establish a new collaboration between computer science and human geography researchers at the University of Aberdeen. |
| Collaborator Contribution | This project represented the first collaboration between the PI (Edwards) and colleagues in Geography at Aberdeen; the collaboration led to joint publications, further funding (to both computer science and geography), joint PhD supervision. |
| Impact | Multi-disciplinary collaboration involving computer science and human geography. Most significant outcome was the creation of a core group of interdisciplinary researchers that has since grown into a much larger Digital Economy group at the University of Aberdeen |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | Investigating and evaluating novel interfaces for management of RDF metadata |
| Organisation | Trinity College Dublin |
| Department | Computational Linguistics Group |
| Country | Ireland |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with Trinity College, Dublin to investigate and evaluate novel interfaces for management of RDF metadata. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributed expertise on evaluation of user systems, helped with organisation of user evaluation experiments. |
| Impact | Not a multi-disciplinary collaboration - both computer science. |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Title | LIBER natural language RDF interface |
| Description | Software archive for the LIBER natural language tool for semantic metadata developed by the PolicyGrid project. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2006 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Integrated into the ourSpaces VRE (used by 100+ users) |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/LIBER.git |
| Title | PolicyGrid resource ontology (OWL) |
| Description | An OWL ontology developed by the PolicyGrid project to represent digital resources. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | No specific impacts to report. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/ontologies/blob/master/pgI/resource.owl |
| Title | PolicyGrid scientist's intent ontology (OWL) |
| Description | An OWL ontology developed by the PolicyGrid project to represent aspects of scientist's intent - used to annotate experimental workflows. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2007 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Scientists's intent model (and associated ontology) has gone on to feature in several other activities including development of a data quality model (Baillie, Edwards, Pignotti) and the w3C provenance working group. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/ontologies/blob/master/pgI/Intent.owl |
| Title | PolicyGrid task ontology (OWL) |
| Description | An OWL ontology developed by the PolicyGrid project to represent tasks (activities) within social science research. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | No specific impacts to report. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/ontologies/blob/master/pgI/task.owl |
| Title | PolicyGrid utility ontology (OWL) |
| Description | An OWL ontology developed by the PolicyGrid project to represent utility concepts. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | No specific impacts to report. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/ontologies/blob/master/pgI/utility.owl |
| Title | SQuAnTo qualitative coding tool |
| Description | Software archive for the SQuAnTo qualitative coding tool developed by the PolicyGrid project |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2006 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Used by a small number of social science researchers associated with PolicyGrid. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/SQuAnTo.git |
| Title | ourSpaces virtual research environment |
| Description | A web-based virtual research environment, developed initially by the PolicyGrid-I project and significantly extended by PolicyGrid-II. Built upon a range of Semantic Web and Web2.0 technologies. This outcome represents the latest version of the site - developed considerably since the original version produced in an earlier project. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2012 |
| Impact | Software was at one time in use by 100+ researchers; aspects of the system are the subject of a knowledge exchange activity with SEPA to enhance their SEWeb tool. |
| URL | http://www.purl.org/policygrid/ourspaces |
| Title | ourSpaces virtual research environment software |
| Description | Source code, etc. for the virtual research environment - available under the Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL) Version 2.1 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html) |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2012 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Software in use by 100+ researchers; elements of it subject of a knowledge exchange activity with SEPA as part of their SEWeb portal. |
| URL | https://github.com/policygrid/ourSpaces.git |
| Description | Evaluating LIBER, an ontology-driven WYSIWYM interface (Speaker: F Hielkema) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given to the Computational Linguistics Group, Trinity College Dublin, 12 November 2008. Led to a collaboration between Aberdeen and Trinity on a technology evaluation study. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | FEARLUS+SPOM (Speaker: J G Polhill) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the 10th meeting of the ALTER-Net Network Management Group (NMG), (Lifewatch planning meeting), CEH Edinburgh, 14 February 2008. No specific impacts reported. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | National Centre for eSocial Science strategy board (P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | As a member of the National Centre for eSocial Science (NCeSS) strategy board, I contributed to the wider development of the eSocial Science agenda across the UK. Wider impacts associated with NCeSS |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006,2007,2008,2009 |
| Description | PolicyGrid : Semantic Grid tools for rural policy development and appraisal (Speaker: E Pignotti) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at the NIEeS workshop on "Individuals and Environmental Change: eScience for Sustainable Systems", Gregynog, February 2008. Requests for further information about PolicyGrid software tools and ontologies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | PolicyGrid : Semantic Grid tools for rural policy development and appraisal (Speaker: E Pignotti) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the AgriGrid meeting, November 2007, York. Requests for information about the PolicyGrid software tools, ontologies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | PolicyGrid evaluation session (Workshop 3) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | PolicyGrid evaluation session at the e-Social Science International Conference 2008. Session aims: to evaluate a range of prototype e-Science tools with potential users. Participants in this event assisted with the evaluation of a range of PolicyGrid software tools - contributing to further software revisions, and results presented in scientific papers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | PolicyGrid introduction and scene setting workshop (Workshop 1) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | PolicyGrid kick-off event, Aberdeen, 5 June 2006 Workshop content: Introduction to PolicyGrid and its agenda and aims; discussion and explanations of ontologies; assessment of existing quantitative and qualitative datasets and simulation models; initial discussion on domain terminologies; group work on identifying user needs (policy-makers, social scientists) in relation to PolicyGrid and NCeSS aims. This project kick-off event informed the ongoing PolicyGrid agenda; workshop participants helped develop initial requirements for the ontology and software development activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006 |
| Description | PolicyGrid ontologies and metadata workshop (Workshop 2) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | PolicyGrid Workshop 2, Aberdeen, 12 January 2077 The workshop focussed on the role of metadata in supporting effective eResearch within social science. Three discussion groups spent the day focusing on key areas, namely: metadata support for social simulation; metadata support for social science data; metadata support for social science methodology. Workshop participants helped set the agenda for ongoing ontology development work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | Provenance and evidence-based policy research (Speaker: P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the "Use Cases for Provenance in eScience" workshop, Edinburgh, 20 April 2009. One-day workshop as part of an eScience Institute Thematic Program on Principles of Provenance. Establishing a number of contacts in the wider UK provenance community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | Rural studies, e-social science and evidence based policy assessment : reflections from the PolicyGrid project (Speaker: L Philip) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers Conference, Geographies that Matter, London, 27-29 August 2008. No specific impacts reported. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| URL | http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Research+and+Higher+Education/Annual+International+Conference.htm |
| Description | Semantic Grid tools for rural policy development and appraisal (Speaker: P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the ESRC Research Methods Festival, Oxford, July 2006. Creation of a network of contacts that proved useful during the remainder of the PolicyGrid project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006 |
| Description | Semantic grid challenges for eResearch : The PolicyGrid view (Speaker: A Gouaich) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at the NCeSS workshop "A Semantic Grid for Social Science", Manchester, June 2006. Not aware of any notable impacts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006 |
| Description | Semantic workflow management for social simulation (Speaker: E Pignotti) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Extended abstract presented at the UK eScience All Hands Meeting in Edinburgh, September 2008. Speaker (PhD student at the time) received feedback on his ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Social simulation on the grid |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Tutorial organised at ESSA 2009 (The Sixth Conference of the European Social Simulation Association) - delivered by Gary Polhill (Macaulay Institute) with contribution from Edoardo Pignotti (University of Aberdeen) Raised awareness of the JISC ENGAGE-funded project SwarmCloud - aligned with PolicyGrid. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/essa2009/tutorials.php |
| Description | Supporting provenance and argumentation in evidence-based policy assessment (Speaker: A Chorley) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at eResearch08 - The Oxford eResearch Conference, Oxford, 11-13 September 2008. Some feedback from peers on approach linking provenance, argumentation and policy evidence. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | The PolicyGrid project, evidence based policy assessment and data provenance (Speaker: L Philip) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Geographies that Matter, London, 27-29 August 2008. No specific impacts reported, other than queries about the work of PolicyGrid. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| URL | http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Research+and+Higher+Education/Annual+International+Conference.htm |
| Description | The eSocial science agenda : challenges and opportunities for geographers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Themed session at the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers, August 2008. Requests for more information about the ourSpaces VRE prototype |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Using eScience to support evidence-based policy research (Speaker: J Farrington) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at the edikt2009 Symposium "Using computing in your research", Dundee, 29 April 2009 Awareness raising of potential of eScience technologies to impact on research methods |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | Why ontologies are only part of the answer for humanities and social science (Speaker: P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at the NCeSS Agenda Setting Workshop on "Building Ontologies for Humanities & Social Sciences", 23 March 2007. We received requests for copies of our initial ontologies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | Workflow support and agent-based social simulation (Speaker: E Pignotti) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at 4th International Conference on e-Social Science workshop on "Agent-Based Modelling for the Spatial-Social Sciences", Manchester, 18 June 2008. Feedback from peers influenced development of our ideas |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Workshop : A Semantic Grid for social science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The workshop focused on the challenges faced by the social science community in order to realise the vision of the Semantic Grid to support their research agenda. Event held as part of the Second International Conference on e-Social Science. June 28th 2006 - Manchester, UK The event helped to establish a sub-group within the wider eSocial Science community interested in semantic web/grid. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006 |
| Description | eScience support for evidence-based policy making (Speaker: P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Extended abstract presented at the UK eScience All Hands Meeting 2008 in Edinburgh, September 2008. Requests for further information about the PolicyGrid project and the ontologies developed to date. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | ourSpaces : a collaborative research environment for e-social science (Speaker: F Hielkema) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at OGF21, Seattle, Washington, October 2007. Awareness raising of research group activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | ourSpaces : web2.0 meets the semantic grid for social science (Speaker: P Edwards) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation at the NCeSS "Research 2.0" workshop, Manchester, 18 June 2008 Resulted in requests for more information about the prototype ourSpaces VRE, and a number of academics keen to be put on the waiting list for accounts once the system went live. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |