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A SKOS Radiation Safety Thesaurus for People Living in Contaminated Territories
Abstract
During the long-term period of a nuclear disaster, people living in contaminated territories need to gain knowledge in order to take protective actions. While existing representations of this knowledge are designed for experts, we propose a thesaurus of radiation safety built for the lay people. We present a methodology to extract such a thesaurus from a set of documents addressed to non-experts. Extension of the corpus and implementation of more automated processes are still required to improve the resulting thesaurus.
Les accidents nucléaires majeurs constituent des crises à grande échelle, susceptibles de contaminer de large territoires pour des décennies. Les habitants de ces territoires doivent alors acquérir de nouvelles connaissances et adapter leur mode de vie pour limiter l'impact sanitaire et sociétal des radiations. Si la France a développé un plan de gestion d'une telle situation, les stratégies de communication proposées laissent peu de place au dialogue entre les autorités et les citoyens ainsi qu'aux usages du Web social. Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le cadre du projet de recherche SCOPANUM (Stratégies de COmmunication de crise en gestion Post-Accident NUcléaire via les Médias Sociaux) soutenu par le CSFRS (Conseil Supérieur Pour la Formation et la Recherche Stratégique). Elle vise à examiner le potentiel des technologies de l'information et de la communication pour la mise en œuvre d'une communication de crise plus adaptée aux situations post-accidentelles nucléaires. Après l'accident nucléaire de Fukushima Daiichi, les mesures de la radioactivité ont fait l'objet de pratiques collaboratives de collecte et d’agrégation s’appuyant sur les médias sociaux. L'étude des usages de Twitter a révélé que les modalités de diffusion de ces mesures ne sont pas adaptées aux spécificités de la situation post-accidentelle nucléaire. Sur la base de ces résultats, nous avons proposé des recommandations et un prototype d'outil logiciel pour favoriser la réutilisabilité de mesures de la radioactivité ainsi partagées. Nos travaux portent également sur les connaissances pratiques susceptibles d'aider les personnes à adapter leur quotidien à la vie dans les territoires contaminés par un accident nucléaire. Plusieurs méthodes sont présentées pour faciliter l'identification de ces connaissances et leur représentation formelle à l'aide des technologies du Web Sémantique. À partir de ces modèles, nous décrivons la conception et l'évaluation d'une application web, Ginkgo, visant à faciliter l'appropriation et le partage des connaissances en matière de radioprotection.
This paper presents approaches on how to deal with terminological ambiguities (different understandings of terms in heterogeneous groups of actors) in collaborative systems. First we will give some insight on the conceptual and theoretical foundation surrounding the ‘triangle of reference’, a model of how linguistic symbols are related to the objects they represent. Then we will describe the results of our exploratory empirical study, which was conducted in Germany, and dealt with inter-organisational crisis communication. Based on this, we will then deduce requirements necessary for supporting and dealing with terminologies, and propose technical approaches for collaborative systems.
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima: An analysis of traditional and new media coverage of nuclear accidents and radiation
Sharon M. Friedman
Abstract
The Internet made an enormous amount of information on Fukushima available, far more than was provided by the media during the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. While journalists contributed much of the news about Fukushima, citizens actively participated in blogs and on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, exchanging views and directing others to important news articles or videos. The Internet also gave the traditional media many opportunities for better coverage, with more space for articles and the ability to publish interactive graphics and videos. Coverage in The New York Times, for example, included an abundance of background and explanatory information about the Fukushima accident and radiation releases in multiple formats and gave readers the opportunity to better understand technical information. Consequently, radiation coverage of the Fukushima accident was better than that of the Three Mile Island or Chernobyl accidents. Television reporting, however, still presented some problems.
Emergency Response and Relief Coordination Efforts are evolving to leverage the efficiencies offered by the internet in the area of real time communication among agents and stakeholders. There is widespread consensus both in the technical and ER community that to improve efficiency of response, information must be shared and web based protocols must be used [22]. In addition to known technical and non-technical obstacles that inhibit the effective and seamless coordination of operations, we identify issues that challenge the development of functional information and communication models. Recent studies in ontology engineering, and evidence from direct observations of open-source work groups in this field, point to the need for an easy to use 'open' conceptual and semantic framework, defined here broadly as 'Open Ontology' (OOnt), and a corresponding design and implementation methodology that can be referenced unambiguously and universally by developers and users of information systems designed to support ER operations.
We present a vision of the future of emergency management that better supports inclusion of activities and information from members of the public during disasters and mass emergency events. Such a vision relies on integration of multiple subfields of computer science, and a commitment to an understanding of the domain of application. It supports the hopes of a grid/cyberinfrastructure-enabled future that makes use of social software. However, in contrast to how emergency management is often understood, it aims to push beyond the idea of monitoring on-line activity, and instead focuses on an understudied but critical aspect of mass emergency response—the needs and roles of members of the public. By viewing the citizenry as a powerful, self-organizing, and collectively intelligent force, information and communication technology can play a transformational role in crisis. Critical topics for research and development include an understanding of the quantity and quality of information (and its continuous change) produced through computer-mediated communication during emergencies; mechanisms for ensuring trustworthiness and security of information; mechanisms for aligning informal and formal sources of information; and new applications of information extraction techniques.
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps for extracting useful, relevant information during emergencies using information extraction (IE) techniques.
Search engines are becoming such an easy way to find textual resources that we wish to use them also for multimedia content; however, syntactic techniques, even if promising, are not up to the task: future search engines must consider new approaches. Experimental prototypes of this search engine of the future are appearing. Most of them employs "smart machines" able to directly elaborate multimedia resources, but we believe that the solution should embrace also "smart data", able to capture lexical and conceptual characteristics of a domain in an ontology. In order to prove that Semantic Web technologies provide real benefits to end users in terms of an easier and more effective access to information, we developed , a Semantic Web framework that eases the de- ployment of semantic search engines. Following a model-driven approach to application development, makes ontologies (both the SKOS model and the domain knowledge) part of the running code. We eval- uate the advantages of against traditional approaches in two real world deployments: one to search images of skiers for Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games and one to search music files.
The Natural Language Toolkit is a suite of program modules, data sets and tutorials supporting research and teaching in computational linguistics and natural language processing. NLTK is written in Python and distributed under the GPL open source license. Over the past year the toolkit has been rewritten, simplifying many linguistic data structures and taking advantage of recent enhancements in the Python language. This paper reports on the simplified toolkit and explains how it is used in teaching NLP.
The Natural Language Toolkit is a suite of program modules, data sets and tutorials supporting research and teaching in com- putational linguistics and natural language processing. NLTK is written in Python and distributed under the GPL open source license. Over the past year the toolkit has been rewritten, simplifying many linguis- tic data structures and taking advantage of recent enhancements in the Python lan- guage. This paper reports on the simpli- fied toolkit and explains how it is used in teaching NLP.
Interoperability has been a basic requirement for the modern information systems environment for over two decades. How have key requirements for interoperability changed over that time? How can we understand the full scope of interoperability issues? What has shaped research on information system interoperability? What key progress has been made? This chapter provides some of the answers to these questions. In particular, it looks at different levels of information system interoperability, while reviewing the changing focus of interoperability research themes, past achievements and new challenges in the emerging global information infrastructure (GII). It divides the research into three generations, and discusses some of achievements of the past. Finally, as we move from managing data to information, and in future knowledge, the need for achieving semantic interoperability is discussed and key components of solutions are introduced.
This paper introduces SKOS Core, an RDF vocabulary for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes (thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary). SKOS Core is published and maintained by the W3C Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an initial basis for establishing clear recommendations for the use of SKOS Core and DCMI Metadata Terms in combination. Also discussed are management policies for SKOS Core and other RDF vocabularies, and the relationship between a 'SKOS concept scheme' and an 'RDFS/OWL ontology'.
This chapter discusses nuclear safety ontology. Ontology is a basis for communication and knowledge sharing in society, which are prerequisites for successful risk deliberation. The chapter discusses the requirements for appropriate ontology in socio-technological contexts. Ontology for the purpose must be based on the principles common to every specific domain of safety, and it must be understandable to lay people for smooth communication. The chapter then proposes the nuclear safety ontology based on the fundamental concepts of general safety and the human-machine system's view of safety assurance. The ontology constructed in this work will be helpful for the public to access domain-specific knowledge in terms of the basic principles of general safety.
A novel implementation is presented for NREO, a subject-specific ontology of the Nuclear or Radiological Emergency domain. The ontology design is driven by the requirements of ontology-based, multi-lingual language processing and retrieval use cases, but care is taken to architect the foundations in a way that can be extended to support other use cases in the domain. More specifically, NREO codifies and cross-references existing terminology glossaries and stakeholder lists into machine-processable terminological resources. At the interest of semantic interoperability, the proposed architecture is based on the Simple Knowledge Organization Scheme catalyzing the extensive cross-linking to different ontologies both within the nuclear technology domain and in related domains and disciplines. This and all other core design decisions are presented and discussed under the prism of their adequacy for our use cases and requirements. Both the ontology and terminological data have been made publicly available.
This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environmental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental objective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable resources. For we must strive to understand the relation ship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other individual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem.
This article explores how mapping mashup can trigger and shape the public involvement during an online controversy. It suggests to depart from merely focusing on the maps’ impact to rather analyse their specific affordances in shaping the public engagement. This interrelation between maps and public can be analysed in the online debate about radiation levels in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear event in March 2011: various maps were created in order to provide alternative views of the radiation situation. This case study provides the opportunity to analyse how citizens gathered online to fulfill the various steps in radiation mapmaking; the various steps in this process were reconstituted by interviewing the main actors and by using a Web Crawler. Once this interrelation between the public and maps is clarified, the affordances of mapping mashup are characterized by their belonging to digital culture.
This thesis describes an investigation into the practical use of ontologies for the development of information systems. Ontologies are formal descriptions of shared knowledge in a domain. An ontology can be used as a specification of an information system because it specifies the knowledge that is required for the tasks the information system has to perform. Sharing and reuse of ontologies across different domains and applications can therefore improve information systems design. Ontologies have been a subject for a lot of research carried out in the artificial intelligence community. Although many ontologies have been developed, they fail to demonstrate that ontologies for large and complex domains can be developed that can be used and reused across different applications. There are three reasons for this: (i) many ontologies have not been used to develop a real-life application, (ii) many ontologies have not been reused for different applications in different domains and (iii)many ontologies are merely taxonomies of domain concepts and fail to capture meta-level and tacit background knowledge. As a result, the question whether ontologies can be used and reused for different real-life applications remains open. The aim of our research has therefore been to find the answer to this question.
A semantic mobile web application for radiation safety in contaminated areas
- L.-A Cotfas
- A Segault
- F Tajariol
- I Roxin
A semantic system for knowledge sharing in post-nuclear-accident situations
- A Segault
- L.-A Cotfas
- F Tajariol
EMTerms 1.0: a terminological resource for crisis tweets
- I Temnikova
- C Castillo
- S Vieweg
Radiation and Health Seminar
- M Tsubokura
Guidance on Practical Radiation Protection for People Living in Long-Term Contaminated Territories
- Sage Project
Community building through risk communication infrastructures
- R L Heath
- M J Palenchar
- H D Ohair
- RL Heath