The semantic reef: a hypothesis-based, eco-informatics platform to support automated knowledge discovery for remotely monitored reef systems

Eco-informatics is the combination of multiple environmental datasets and modeling tools used to test ecological hypotheses and derive information. The Semantic Reef project is developing automated data processing, problem-solving and knowledge discovery systems to better understand and manage reef ecosystems. Three core tools are utilized; Semantic Web, Grid Computing and workflow based e-Research approaches, creating a platform designed to evaluate complex hypothesis queries and provide alerting for unusual events (e.g. spawning, bleaching). Remote environmental monitoring is being widely deployed to gather data in real-time. As the volume of raw data increases, bottlenecks are expected to develop in the data analysis phases - current data processing still involves human intervention and manual manipulation. Semantic Web technologies address this data deluge through using explicit descriptions, called ontologies, of the datasets and structures, making the data machine-understandable, therefore automating data integration and processing. The Semantic Reef project is focused on developing reef ontologies, which, when coupled to datasets, derives inferences from data to 'ask' the system questions for semantic correlation and analysis. Currently, the model is being extended to map dynamic data from reef-based sensor-networks into the ontology in real-time, offering a new approach to solving problems of scale across reefs.

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11th International Coral Reef Symposium 2008

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