An Application of the Semantic Web Technologies in the Knowledge Domain related to the Allergy

• Published in: Joho Chishiki Gakkaishi Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 22 - 46
• Main Authors: SOLOVIEVA, Elena, ISHIZUKA, Hidehiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Japan Society of Information and Knowledge 19.02.2008
• Subjects: Allergy; Information System; Knowledge Domain; Ontology; Semantic Web Technologies
• ISSN: 0917-1436; 1881-7661
• DOI: 10.2964/jsik.ishi007

The authors tried to apply XML/RDF (Resource Description Framework) technologies to the knowledge domain related to the allergy which includes complicated data structures and semantic relationships among data elements and resources. The purpose of this work is threefold: (i) The design and the development of the ontology representing a set of the concepts and the relationships between these concepts for the knowledge domain devoted to the factors of allergic diseases; (ii) The application of this ontology for subject-indexing of resources related to the allergic diseases; (iii) The use of the created ontology and the indexing for retrieving the data from the resources. The structurization, representation and storage of metadata have been performed by using the Semantic Web technologies such as RDF and the Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS). On the other hand, the structure of the web resources themselves is described by using the XML format. In order to retrieve the information, represented by the Semantic Web technologies and XML, we developed a prototype web application. We further demonstrate that RDF and other Semantic Web technologies provide new possibilities for searching, browsing and retrieving the information accumulated in the life sciences.