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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<meta name="generator"
content="HTML Tidy for Mac OS X (vers 1st September 2004), see www.w3.org" />
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content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
<title>Semantic Web Advanced Development for Europe
(SWAD-Europe)</title>
<link href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/style/swad-europe-showcase.css"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
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</head>
<body>
<div id="leftcontent" valign="top">
<div align="center" valign="top">
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe">
<img alt="SWAD-Europe"
src="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/images/swade100.gif"
height="75" border="0" /></a>
<a href="http://www.cordis.lu/ist/">
<img src="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/images/istlogo-thumb.gif"
alt="EU IST logo" height="75" border="0" /></a>
</div>

<div id="mainMenu">
<ul id="menuList">
<li class="nonexpandingmenubar">
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/" id="introMenu"
name="introMenu">Introduction</a>
</li>
<li class="menubar">
<a id="demosMenuActuator" class="actuator" accesskey="d"
name="demosMenuActuator">Demonstrators</a>
<ul id="demosMenu" class="menu">
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-blog.html">
Semantic Blogging</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-portal.html">
Semantic Portals</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-thes.html">
Thesaurus Browser</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-large.html">
Scale Demonstrator</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="menubar">
<a id="themesMenuActuator" class="actuator" accesskey="t"
name="themesMenuActuator">Themes</a>
<ul id="themesMenu" class="menu">
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/gs.html">Getting
Started</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/tools/">Tools</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/digital-libraries.html">
Digital Libraries</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/business-integration.html">
Business Integration</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/images.html">
Image Description</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/community/">
Community Building</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/history.html">
Project History</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/future.html">
Future Directions</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="menubar">
<a id="guideMenuActuator" class="actuator" accesskey="g"
name="guideMenuActuator">Guidelines</a>
<ul id="guideMenu" class="menu">
<!--<li><a href="blank.html">Aerospace</a> stilo*</li>-->
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/lifesci.html">
Life Science</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/guide-for-librarian.html">
Librarian</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/coder.html">
Coder</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/business-guidelines.html">
Business Integration</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/heritage.html">
Heritage</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="menubar">
<a id="resourcesMenuActuator" class="actuator" accesskey="r"
name="resourcesMenuActuator">Resources</a>
<ul id="resourcesMenu" class="menu">
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/intro.html">
Reports</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/presentations.html">
Presentations</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="nonexpandingmenubar">
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/contact.html"
id="contactMenu" name="contactMenu">Contact</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

<!-- content goes here -->
<div id="rightcontent">
<h1 class="title">Semantic Portals Demonstrator</h1>
<a href="http://www.swed.org.uk"><img src="swed-side.png" width=
"408" height="215" align="right" border="0" alt=
"Screen shot of demonstration web site" /></a>
<p>The Semantic Web Environment Directory (SWED) project is a
SWAD-E demonstrator aimed at illustrating the nature of the
semantic web and the practical issues in making use of it.</p>
<p>The focus of the demonstration is to create a <em>directory of
UK based environmental organisations</em>. The SWED team are
working closely with the <a href=
"http://www.the-environment-council.org.uk/">The Environment
Council</a> and other environmental, natural history and community
organisations, to help ensure that the directory will meet the
needs of the wider environment related community in the UK.</p>
<p>The key outputs of the project are:</p>
<ul>
<li>a fully working prototype directory web site (<a href=
"http://www.swed.org.uk">http://www.swed.org.uk</a>)</li>
<li>downloadable software (see <a href=
"http://www.swed.org.uk/swed_technical_resources.htm">technical
resources</a> pages) that will allow others to build their own
directory pages, portals or other information resources</li>
<li>Reports detailing the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/requirements-demo-2/">system
requirements</a> and the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/demo_2_report/">lessons
learnt</a> during development.</li>
</ul>
<p>All data and software are being developed using non-proprietary
open technical standards.</p>
<p>Key goals of the project include:</p>
<ul>
<li>improved sustainability</li>
<li>ease of maintenance</li>
<li>enabling easy reuse of information</li>
</ul>
<p>These goals are made possible by using a Semantic Web based
approach. This approach means that the directory member
organisations publish, own and control their own information. This
information is then harvested and collated by SWED who produce a
directory Web site.</p>
<p>Essentially the SWED directory provides a view of the data, that
is brought together from across the Web. This 'self publishing' or
data harvesting approach means that <em>others can also harvest and
collate the information</em> and provide different views (e.g. a
specialist directory containing only a small subset of the
organisations) and enrich the information by adding their own
additional information (e.g. what specialist services or resources
organisations provide).</p>
<p>On the Web site, the richness of the indexing of the information
makes it easy to browse and search, to find relevant
organisations.</p>
<p>While SWED is a research project we are working with a number of
national and local environmental organisations to develop an
<i>exit strategy</i> that will help ensure that the system is used
and maintained once the project ends.</p>
<h2>Semantic web features demonstrated</h2>
<p>The demonstrator illustrates many practical features of the
semantic web.</p>
<p>The RDF data format is used for publication of the organization
descriptions. As well as capturing basic properties such as name
and description this enables us to capture classifications for
organizations and relational links between them. The decentralized
nature of the approach means that a subgroup in the community would
be free to enrich their descriptions with other information or to
publish additional annotations on existing published descriptions
using new or extended vocabularies. This is illustrated in the web
site in that the bootstrap organization descriptions are taken from
an earlier publication and augmented by classifications and
relational links published directly by the SWED team. The site's
user interface makes it clear when a page is displaying information
from such mixed sources and makes it possible to trace back the
provenance of the information.</p>
<p>The vocabularies used to organize the data into different topic
hierarchies are published as a mixture of OWL ontologies and SKOS
thesauri. This illustrates the ability to mix and match different
vocabulary schemes and the interface itself illustrates the
benefits of using such schemes in enabling browsing.</p>
<p>Thus this demonstrator reinforces the three main components of
the semantic web: data + ontologies + webness.</p>
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