Services Engineering

The Services Engineering project uses semantic information integration and retrieval technology from the Information Engineering Lab and applies it to applications such as meta-data repositories and data integration services for the Atlas of Living Australia, eHealth, or Sustainable Bioenergy Production. It further conducts research in ontologies and semantic data integration and retrieval.

Activity 1: Metadata repository for the Atlas of Living Australia

"The Atlas of Living Australia is a five-year project funded under the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Its mission is to develop a biodiversity data management system which will link Australia’s biological knowledge with its scientific and agricultural reference collections and other custodians of biological information." (http://www.ala.org.au/)

The Services Engineering project supports the Atlas of Living Australia by designing and implementing a Metadata Repository based system which can store and relate information about various sources of biological data in Australia. The Metadata Repository system harvests meta-data from external information sources such as Australian Faunal Directory, Australian Plant Names Index, PaDIL, Encyclopedia of Life Images , etc.; then stores and relates them in the semantic content management system Fedora Commons.

ALA Repository Web Page and related background data

Activity 2 (Proposed): An SOA for semantic management of e-research information with application to Sustainable Bioenergy Production

Many urgent problems in Australia require new, data-intensive, knowledge-rich transdisciplinary science. Environmental accounting problems, such as water accounting and planning for sustainable bioenergy production, exemplify the new science. Semantic discovery and integration of data, services, and existing tools into scientific workflows is a key enabler.

We intend to develop a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and a corresponding suite of services, tools, and interfaces designed to discover and integrate heterogeneous, distributed information sources and tools via the use of formal ontologies. We propose to apply it to the domain of sustainable bioenergy production and to deliver some key application products plus a long term platform for e-research.

Proposed Architecture for Activity 2

Activity 3 (Proposed): Semantic Health Information retrieval

Better patient information tools for professionals in the health care system save time, improve the patient's care, and reduce the overall cost of the health care sector.

We propose to develop a platform that will allow us to rapidly develop systems which will help clinicians to quickly access documents such as scientific literature or clinical guidelines that are vital for the current patient's case. Providing such information automatically is expected to save time in the decision making process. We will present results to clinicians in an easy to grasp, intuitive way to maximise benefit for the user.

Screenshot of a first prototype of a system retrieving scientific literature matching an electronic health record.