AMSTERDAM, November 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --
Winners Announced
at International Semantic Web Conference
Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific,
technical and medical information products and services, is pleased
to announce the winners of the 2012 Semantic Web Challenge (SWC).
Determined by a jury of leading experts from both academia and
industry, winners were announced at the International Semantic Web
Conference held in Boston, MA,
this month. The challenge and allocated prizes were sponsored by
Elsevier.
SWC contestants competed in any of two challenge categories:
'Open Track' and 'Billion Triples Track'. Open Track contestants
are required to submit applications that utilize the semantics
(meaning) of data and applications are designed to operate in an
open web environment where information sources are under diverse
ownership and control; Billion Triples Track contestants have to
reason with a pre-supplied, very big data set of mixed quality.
Of this year's 24 submissions, the panel of experts selected 4
Open Track Challenge winners and 1 Billion Triples Track
winner.
Open Track challenge:
- 1st prize: "Event Media" by Houd Khrouf,
Vuk Milicic and Raphaël Troncy from
EURECOM, Sophia Antipolis, France
- This application demonstrates how to use semantic web technology
to more efficiently and easily integrate multiple online and social
media content sources that evolve over time.
- 2nd prize: "Semantic Processing of Urban Data"
by S. Kotoulas, V. Lopez, R Lloyd, M. Sbodid, F. Lecue, M.
Stephenson, E. Daly, V. Bicer, A. Gkoulalas-Divanis, G. Di Lorenzo, A. Schumann and P. Aonghusa from
IBM research's Smart Cities Team - The mayor of Dublin wanted to know why his ambulances were
perennially late so this team 'knowledge mined' hundreds of
information sources emanating from the city ranging from usual
twitter feeds to garbage collection tags and many more to help the
mayor improve city service.
- 3rd prize: jointly awarded to: "Open Self
Medication" by Olivier Curé of Universite Paris-Est, LIGM, CNRS -
This application advises on self-medication, using the Linked Open
Data cloud to mine contra indications for various over the counter
medications and adds to these where they were missing. A mobile geo
location price comparison tool enables users to find nearby
pharmacies that sell the cheapest drugs, enabling French health
care insurance companies to reduce their costs; "Wildfire
Monitoring" by K. Kyzirakos, M. Karpathiotakis, G. Garbis, C.
Nikoladu, K. Bereta, I Papatousis, T. Herekakis, D. Michail, M.
Koubarakis and C. Kontoes from the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens, National
Observatory of Athens and the
Harokopeio University of Athens -
This application combines multimedia satellite images with
ontologies and Linked Geospatial Data to improve the wildfire
monitoring service used by the Greek civil protection agencies,
military, and firefighters.
Billion Triples Track challenge:
- "Exploring the linked data cloud" by X. Zhang, D. Song,
S.Priya, Z. Daniels, K. Reynolds and J. Heflin of Lehigh University, USA. This system allows users to understand
how massive data sets are populated and reveals patterns in within
these data sets.
"We were extremely impressed by the demos this year, many of
which were interesting, well designed, highly polished, and had
clear use cases for both the general public and for domain
experts," explained SWC co-chairs Andreas
Harth, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield.
In 2003 the SWC was set up to showcase the very latest in
semantic web technology. Over the years the challenge has attracted
over 165 submissions from across the globe. Every year the final
rounds of this competition take place at the annual International
Semantic Web Conference. The continuing maturity of the tools and
components used to build applications has resulted in increasingly
more compelling demonstrations.
"Elsevier is a proud sponsor of the Semantic Web
Challenge as it clearly illustrates what the Semantic Web can
provide to the world by highlighting the state-of-the-art
developments in web technology each year. Furthermore, allowing
researchers to showcase their work and compare it to others
stimulates current research in this exciting and growing field,"
said Sweitze Roffel, Senior Publisher in Computer Science at
Elsevier.
About the Semantic Web Challenge
The Semantic Web Challenge has been organized in cooperation
with the Semantic Web Science Association since 2003 with the aim
to offer participants the chance to submit their best Semantic Web
Applications. The overall objective of the challenge is to apply
Semantic Web techniques in building online end-user applications
that integrate, combine and deduce information needed to assist
users in performing tasks. As the potential of the Semantic Web is
very broad, the open challenge intentionally does not define any
specific task, data set, or application domain. To allow a broad
range of applications to compete with each other, all teams are
judged using a number of minimal criteria, as well as additional
desired criteria. Based on these predefined criteria the winners
are selected by an expert jury.
Full details of the competition, judging, as well as all the
competing teams, including their papers, demos and presentations
can be found on http://challenge.semanticweb.org
About the Semantic Web
The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current
human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources
in a machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door
to more advanced applications and functionality on the Web.
Computers will be better able to search, process, integrate and
present the content of these resources in a meaningful, intelligent
manner.
About the International Semantic Web
Conference series
The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) is the premier
international forum for the Semantic Web and Linked Data Community.
At the conference scientists, industry specialists, and
practitioners meet to discuss the future of practical, scalable,
user-friendly, and game changing solutions. ISWC is organized
annually by the Semantic Web Science Association and typically
rotates between America, Europe
and Asia.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical
and medical information products and services. The company works in
partnership with the global science and health communities to
publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and
Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major
reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online
solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and
Mosby's Nursing Suite, which enhance the productivity of science
and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint
Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver
better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people
worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a
world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly
owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols
are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and
ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
Media contact
Sweitze Roffel
Elsevier
+31-20-485-2382
s.roffel@elsevier.com