Title : Mobile cultural heritage guide: location-aware semantic search

Presenter Chris van Aart
Abstract In this work, we explore the use of location aware mobile devices for searching and browsing a large number of general and cultural heritage information repositories using minimal interaction. Based on GPS positioning we can determine a user's location and context, composed of physical nearby locations, historic events that have taken place there, artworks that are created or inspired by those locations and artists that have lived or worked there. The user has three levels of refinement: pointing to a specific heading, select facets of cultural heritage object (location, event, artwork or people) and subfacets (e.g.: painting, photograph, book, artist, musician, politician, sport and conflict). In our approach two types of knowledge are combined: general knowledge about geolocations and points of interest and specialized knowledge about a particular domain, i.e. cultural heritage. We use a number of the Linked Open Data sources (DBpedia, Freebase, GeoNames, Wordnet) and a number of general sources from the cultural heritage domain (AAT, ULAN, TGN) as well as data from several cultural institutions (Netherlands Institute for Art History and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam). We show three concrete scenarios where a tourist accesses localized information on his iPhone about the current environment, events, artworks or persons. The semantic search engine ClioPatria is used to search the repositories. We show that Linked Open Data sources in isolation are currently too limited to provide interesting semantic information but combined with each other and with a number of other sources a really informative location-based service can be created.

Title : Semantics in Food Research

Presenter Jan Top
Abstract I will present work done by the Intelligent Systems group at Wageningen UR. After a short introduction I will discuss the use of Semantic Web technology in stimulating and operationalising knowledge exchange in experimental science, in particular in the context of food research. It appears that particular modelling choices have to be made to comply with practical conditions. My objective is to link academic research at the VU to applications in this domain. I hope this presentation sparks off new cooperation initiatives.