Marilde Terezinha Prado Santos

A Fuzzy Ontology-Based Semantic Data Integration System

Data integration becomes even more necessary given the increasing availability of data from distributed and heterogeneous sources. To address such heterogeneity, crisp ontologies have been employed in order to represent the semantics of integrated data. However, it is interesting to use fuzzy logic concepts in these ontologies, for a more expressive representation of vague information relevant to some domains. In this context, this paper presents DISFOQuE system for data integration based on fuzzy ontology, which provides a homogeneous view of data sources and also performs query expansions in order to retrieve more comprehensive answers to the user. We have executed a real experiment in the domain of watershed analysis, which provided a homogeneous view of the watershed data sources and more effective answers to researchers.

Content-based search on an MHEG-5 standard-based multimedia database

Some research effort has been made to create environments for multimedia application development. It is desirable to be able to search the information based on the semantic content, rather than only on the raw data available. The authors discuss the approach that has been adopted to carry out content-based search in the multimedia database being investigated by the SMmD project. The database has been extended aimed at giving support for the retrieval of bitmap, video and text objects through some metadata containing semantic information about the objects. The characteristics of the MHEG-5 standard, which were adopted as a reference in that project, are presented.

WOntoVLab: A Virtual Laboratory Authorship Process Based on Workflow and Ontologies

Virtual laboratories can be used by educational institutions to facilitate and enrich the learning of specific procedures. To provide an environment similar to the real one, it is recommended to create experiments that require the accomplishment of a protocol (guide) aiming to support the assessment of the students. Furthermore, it is important to stimulate the identification of different possibilities to the execution of a same task, considering similar materials and procedures. In this context, this paper describes WOntoVLab, a virtual laboratory authorship process that relies on workflow representation technology and ontologies in order to represent experiments based on semantic vocabulary and alternative steps. The framework developed, WOntoVLab Process Framework (WPF), is also detailed so that educational institutions can be able to define virtual laboratories according to the WOntoVLab process.

Semantic Information Search Facilities for MHEG-5 and SMIL Applications

The AMMO environment (Authoring and Manipulation of Multimedia Objects), has been developed to provide the storage and manipulation of multimedia applications based on the MHEG-5 and SMIL standards. In this paper, the information involved in the representation of multimedia applications, as well as the characteristics of the semantic searches — exact and fuzzy — provided in the AMMO environment are presented. These features allow retrieving media objects Audio, Bitmap, Video and Text and applications based on the MHEG-5 or SMIL using uniform query formulation. A wide range of queries that a user can use to carry out his search in the AMMO’s multimedia data base is made available by keeping. The AMMO’s multimedia data base can be searched through a wide range of queries, this is possible by keeping together the semantic information and the multimedia metadata..

Semantic search aspects of a MHEG-5-based multimedia object server

There is currently some research effort being made in order to identify the needs to support the requirements for the representation and exchange of multimedia applications. To address these points, the ISO/IEC, developed the MHEG-5 international standard. For the SMmD project (Distributed Multimedia System: Support, Structure and Applications), the MHEG-5 standard was adopted as a reference for the representation of multimedia information. As part of this project, an MHEG-5 object server, named SOM-SMmD, was developed.