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RESEARCH
NEXT TIME YOU HAVE A SPARE MOMENT ONLINE, TYPE THE WORD ‘IRELAND’ INTO YOUR SEARCH ENGINE. Chances are you’ll returnmillions, if notmore than a billion
results.And unless you are lucky, that probablymeans fil- tering and sifting until you find something specific of interest. Our world is flooded with information, but finding what you
need can be time-consuming, and getting the bigger picture about a subjectmightmean reading hundreds of documents on- line. The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (Deri) at NUI Gal-
way is part of a worldwide movement to change that. Re- searchers there areworking on ‘semanticweb’ technology,which aims to structure and link data on the web so that computers and people can use it much more easily. “On theweb, information has typ-
ically been isolated in silos,” explains Prof Stefan Decker, Deri’s director. “We want to tear down the bound- aries and make the data that exists right now in textual form– in a text document in aweb browser – really interlinked.” He uses the example of climate
change to illustrate the point. “If you look into climate change, in order to come up with a comprehensive pic- ture in your mind of what the field looks like, to become an expert you have to readmaybe thousands of pa- pers which come up with different theories and data sets,” he says. “It takes a lot of effort and very fewpeo- ple do that, so it’s easy for internet groups to influence public opinion.” The semantic web, or web of
to create and apply semantically linked data. A major issue is how trustworthy the information is – as hu-
mans we generally assign a level of trust or weight to a source, and doing that automatically is an area of research at Deri. “We know the source is trustworthy typically by looking at
their reputation,” saysDecker. “On theweb that’s howmany peo- ple are linked to you,while in theweb of data itmeans howmany people are using your information – that’s one way to do this, theremay bemore.” Research is ongoing into how to link, integrate and use data,
and Decker describes how the area is “exploding” now, and there’s a focus on deployment because themore peoplewho use the semantic web, themore valuable it becomes. “Once you provide high-quality data
‘Wewant to tear down the boundaries and make the data that exists right nowin textual form– in a text document in aweb browser – really interlinked’
which can be interlinked and people can use and reuse, they have an in- centive and it creates a network ef- fect,” he says, describing an analogy where it’s more useful to have many fax machines that can communicate between each other rather than hav- ing just one. “You are increasing the value of the network because you are becoming part of it.” Governments are now making
knowledge, plans a more enabling approach. “We are aiming to bring the information together in a comprehensiveway so you can seewhat is proven or disproven,” explains Decker. “You don’t have to sift through papers, you see it presented in front of you.” The same applies to areas such as cancer research,medicine
and genomics, he adds. “There is somuch information out there, it’s very hard even for experts to keep up. What a researcher does is often to bring data together fromdifferent sources, and seeing the information in different contexts can lead to newdis- coveries. They see connections there that weren’t as visible.” In global terms, Deri is the largest single centre researching
semantic web technology, and it was set up as a Science Foun- dation Ireland-fundedCentre for ScienceEngineering andTech- nology in 2003. Since then it has grown to more than 140 people and has ac-
quired additional research funding fromsources such as theEu- ropeanUnion Framework Programmes, Enterprise Ireland and industrial partnerships. And, by carrying out academic research and linking with in- dustry partners and collaborators, the centre is exploring how
48 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
open, linked data accessible, and the US government has used technology developed at Deri to power its
Data.gov site, notes Decker. And in- dustry partners such as Avaya, Cel- trak, Cisco, Ericsson, Openlink Software and StormTechnology have been bringing a real-world dimension to the work, he adds. “The partners are bringing us concrete problems, which is important for their business, but they are grounding our work as
well. “Ultimately if we want to have impact and change the way in-
formation is being dealt with, we need to be able to inject our technology into products.”
THE BUSINESS CONNECTION Connecting information together in a way that a computer can use it can help to highlight patterns, create knowledge and en- hance understanding, explains Marc Mellotte, who is business development and applied innovationsmanager atDeri.His group workswith companies to take the technologies coming fromthe research and apply themto create real-world solutions that link and use data smartly. So far, the institute has collaborated with a range of compa-
nies both in Ireland and internationally. “Deri is working with severalmajor pharmaceutical companies, such asUCB, on data integration,” saysMellotte,who describes howlinked data prin- ciples are key to enable efficient data integration by providing a common format and language for data exchange and alignment. “Enterprise spends heavily dealing with data integration. The
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