An Interactive Ontology Visualization Approach for the Networked Home Environment

Ontologies are broadly used in the context of networked home environments. With ontologies it is possible to define and store context information, as well as to model different kinds of physical environments. Ontologies are central to networked home environments as they carry the meaning. However, ontologies and the OWL language is complex. Several ontology visualization approaches have been developed to enhance the understanding of ontologies. The domain of networked home environments sets some special requirements for the ontology visualization approach. The visualization tool presented here, visualizes ontologies in a domain-specific way. It represents effectively the physical structures and spatial relationships of networked home environments. In addition, it provides extensive interaction possibilities for editing and manipulating the visualization. The tool shortens the gap from beginner to intermediate OWL ontology reader by visualizing instances in their actual locations and making OWL ontologies more interesting and concrete, and above all easier to comprehend.




References:
[1] R. J. Schalkoff, "Artificial Intelligence: An Engineering Approach",
McGraw-Hill, Singapore, 1990.
[2] D. Fensel, I. Horrocks, F. van Harmelen, D. McGuinness, and P. F.
Patel-Schneider: OIL: Ontology Infrastructure to Enable the Semantic
Web, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(2), 2001.
[3] T. Gruber, A translation approach to portable ontologies. Knowledge
Acquisition 5(2):199-220, 1993. http://kslweb.
stanford.edu/KSL_Abstracts/KSL-92-71.html
[4] M. Uschoold, M. Cruninger, Ontologies: Principles, Methods and
Applications, Knowledge Engineering Review, 2, 1996.
[5] L. Xie, Y. Zheng, B. Shen, Ontology Construction for Scientific
Visualization, imsccs , pp. 778-784, 2006.
[6] M. Lanzenberger, J. Sampson, AlViz - A Tool for Visual Ontology
Alignment, iv , pp. 430-440, 2006
[7] E.M. Petriu, N.D. Georganas, D.C. Petriu, D. Makrakis, V.Z. Groza,
Sensor-based information appliances, IEEE Instrumentation and
Measurement Magazine 3 (4) , 31-35., 2000
[8] J Davies, R Studer, P Warren - Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and
Research in Ontology-based Systems 2006 - John Wiley & Sons p.4
[9] R. Spence, Information Visualization. Addison- Wesley. 2001.
[10] D.E O'Leary, Using AI in knowledge management: knowledge bases and
ontologies. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 34-39, May/June 1998.
[11] R. Wehrend and C. Lewis. A problem-oriented classification of
visualization techniques. In Proceedings of the First IEEE Conference
on Visualization: Visualizaiion 90, pages 139-143. IEEE, Los Ahunitos,
CA, October 1990.
[12] Protege ontology editor and knowledge-base framework,
http://protege.stanford.edu/
[13] C. Fluit, M. Sabou, and F. van Harmelen. Ontology-based Information
Visualisation. In V. Geroimenko, editor, Visualising the Semantic Web.
Springer, 2002.
[14] OntoViz ontology visualization plug-in for Protégé,
http://protege.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntoViz
[15] Jambalaya ontology visualization plug-in for Protégé
http://www.thechiselgroup.org/jambalaya
[16] J.X. Chen, D. Rine, and H.D. Simon, "Advancing Interactive
Visualization and Computational Steering," IEEE Computational
Science and Engineering, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 13-17, 1996.
[17] G.E. Krasner and S.T. Pope, "A Description of the Model-View-
Controller User Interface Paradigm in the Smalltalk-80 system," Journal
of Object Oriented Programming, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 26-49, 1988.
[18] Singh, I., Stearns, B., Johnson, M., et al.: Designing Enterprise
Applications with the J2EE Platform, 2nd Edition. Addison-Wesley,
2002
[19] M. Tory, A. E. Kirkpatrick, M. Stella Atkins, and T. MÄoller.
Visualization task performance with 2D, 3D, and combination displays.
IEEE Trans.Visual. Comput. Graphics, 12(1), pp. 2-13, 2006.
[20] M. St. John, M.B. Cowen, H.S. Smallman, and H.M. Oonk, "The use of
2D and 3D displays for shape-understanding versus relative-position
tasks," Human Factors, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 79-98, 2001.
[21] L.R. Wanger, J.A. Ferwerda, and D.P. Greenberg. Perceiving spatial
relationships in computergenerated images. IEEE Computer Graphics
and Applications, 12(3), pp. 44-58, May 1992.
[22] C. Fernández-Vara, J. Zagal, and M. Mateas, Evolution of Spatial
Configurations In Videogames in International DiGRA Conference
2005, Vancouver, Canada, 2005.
[23] The official web page of the game The Sims, http://thesims.ea.com/
[24] The official web page of the game SimCity, http://simcity.ea.com/
[25] T.R. Gruber, Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 43, 5/6, pp. 907-928,
1995.
[26] A. Ranganathan, R. E. McGrath, R. Campbell, and D. M. Mickunas.
Ontologies in a pervasive computing environment. Workshop on
Ontologies in Distributed Systems, IJCAI 2003, 2003.
[27] D. T. Luymes, The rhetoric of visual simulation in forest design in
Sheppard S. R Forest and Landscapes, International Union of Forest
Research (IUFRO), CABI International, UK 2000.
[28] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/
[29] http://www.w3.org/Submission/RDQL/