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Ontology for Radiological Terrorism Research

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Domain

The ontology was created from the Radiological Terrorism Research Thesaurus, specifically constrained to the portions under the term “material sources” and “consequence management” (now called response). Other classes not found in these areas, but referenced by fields in these areas, are included, but not developed—this includes Organization, Event, Expertise, Person, and Material and their subclasses.

Background

Terrorism is an incredibly important issue, and agencies within the US and worldwide need to meet the challenge of compiling and organizing research in a number of fields in order to counter this very real threat. In addition, agencies have been criticized in the past for not sharing information, or maintaining knowledge organization systems (KOS) which are incompatible with each other. Work is often duplicated, and often vital information will be unavailable to some agencies even though it has already been archived by others.

Clearly, there is a need for a large-scale KOS that can be used to organize information efficiently and correctly, allow for complex analysis of information, and allow for easy knowledge sharing between agencies. The most flexible and powerful KOS, and therefore the most appropriate, is an ontology. Classes, subclasses and relationships are developed and then appropriate fields are created for each. This allows for faceted search and display, automated search, hierarchical organization of information, and interoperability with other systems.

Users

This is just a sample of the larger, more complete ontology. The complete ontology would be useful for virtually any person or agency dealing with anti-terrorism, counterterrorism, intelligence or consequence management. The ontology will allow risk assessment officers, for example, to see a list of every high-level material source in the United States and Canada and their coordinates. Medical first responders could use it to catalog and retrieve proper treatments for specific bioterrorism agents. And if widely-adopted, it would greatly reduce the barriers to efficient knowledge-sharing. If the Department of Energy we to license a new Uranium mine in Montana, the information would be immediate available to risk-assessment officers, instead of requiring time for the paperwork to make its way over to the Department of Homeland Security.

 

View and navigate the ontology

A Thesaurus for Radiological Terrorism Research

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Changes in this Edition

A number of changes have been made in this revision. Changes to scope notes, terms, and related terms are highlighted throughout this document. These changes should clarify the precise meaning and use. Sturctural changes to broader and narrower term relationships are explained below.

One of the major structural changes is the removal of “radiological terrorism” as a root word for the entire thesaurus. Putting everything under one term was not my initial idea, but the use of the hierarchical display for both input and output lead me to think that was the preferred structure. I have removed “combating radiological terrorism,” “environmental effects,” “radiation protection,” “radioactive isotopes,” “radioactive material sources,” and “radiological injuries” from under “radiological terrorism.”

Still, I think “radiological terrorism goals,” “radiological terrorism scenarios,” and “radiological terrorism requirements” are necessary parts of “radiological terrorism,” so I have kept the first two in the hierarchy and added the third. This leads to multiple inheritance for “radiological terrorism requirements,” which is both a necessary part of “radiological terrorism” and “intelligence.”

Introduction

The CTRS Radiological Terrorism Thesaurus contains descriptive terms used throughout radiological terrorism literature. The terms, their relationships, and their use were culled from several documents, including:

The thesaurus is presented in three forms: first, an alphabetical display of all included terms, including scope notes, preferred terms and synonyms, broader, narrower and related terms, and any scope notes; second, a hierarchical display of preferred terms only; and third, a rotated display of all terms.

Several relationships may be defined for any term in the thesaurus. Scope Notes (SN) are more detailed descriptions of a term’s use when necessary. A preferred term (USE) is a synonym for the term that has been selected for most uses—non-preferred terms do not show up in the hierarchical view. A non-preferred term (UF) is a synonym that may be found in the literature but is not used in the hierarchy. Broader terms (BT) are terms that represent more general classes of the current term. Narrower terms (NT) represent more specific instances or parts of the current term. Finally, related terms (RT) are related to the current term but not in any of the ways already noted.

View the Thesaurus [pdf]

Knowledge Organization System for a Greeting Card Company’s Design Studio Archives

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Note: this was a project for a graduate course in Knowledge Organization Systems

Introduction

The goal of this project is to create a Knowledge Organization System (KOS) for a Greeting Card Company Studio archive so that designers are able to find source artwork and previous designs. This is no small task–Greeting Card Company has been in operation for nearly 100 years and has at least partial archives from the entire period, and today the company employs hundreds of designers and produces thousands of products. There is no question that without an inclusive, accurate, and easy-to-use archive, designers are unable to build on each others ideas and a great deal of work is being duplicated. Also, intellectual property needs to be properly managed and licensed artwork needs to be tracked and protected from accidental misuse.

Currently, all archives are stored in protective containers in the Studio, shelved by year. In addition a vast number of digital files have been compiled on the Studio’s serves and CD and tape backups. This project does not address the physical process of collection and digitization, but instead offers a road map to how items will be classified as they are entered into the system. This KOS also provides a framework for the database and the ultimate user interface.

Below is an analysis of the users and groups, followed by a description of the overall structure of the KOS. After that is a description of each facet, followed by pick lists, synonym rings, and taxonomies for each where applicable.

 

Users

In this analysis three distinct user groups were identified: Archivists, Designers, and Management/Administration. Archivists include the companies current information professionals as well as the interns and temp workers who will be doing the digitization and data entry under their supervision. The KOS has been set up under the assumption that most data entry personnel will be able to properly classify perhaps 80 to 90 percent of all items within each facet, forwarding the rest to more skilled information professionals. The professionals include skilled librarians, art historians, and other researchers who should be adequately prepared to train data entry personnel and classify more difficult items.

The designer group includes artists and graphic designers of varying skill and experience. Nearly all, however, have completed at least a two-year program and the majority have completed a four-year college degree. Taxonomies were developed with this level of expertise in mind. Designers were surveyed and a wide range of thinking about art objects and designs were found. The facets below were designed to cover virtually every way in which a designer might want to look for a piece.

Management and administration also have specific needs. It is for them primarily that the Designer entity described below as well as most facets dealing with licensing and sales have been created.

 

Organization

The archive needs to be broken down into four different logical entities: Art Elements (such as clip art, photographs, sculptures, etc.), Products (such as individual greeting cards, e-cards, etc.), Digital Files, and Designers. Each entity will have a number of associated facets which roughly correspond to the fields in the database and will allow multiple methods of search and organization.

The entity relationships will be defined in the database so that searches will cascade upward. For example, some searching for art elements will be able to find those done by a specific AG department, because Art Elements are related to products which are related to Designers, who have the Department/Team facet. All of this is relatively simple to do with SQL and can be hidden in the interface to make searching easier.

Each facet has an associated type, whether that be a simple constraint on an open text field, a pick list, or a taxonomy. Where lists and taxonomies have been developed the list’s page number is noted as well.

View the KOS, including the entities and their facets, pick lists, and taxonomies [pdf]