Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ST4RT (Semantic Transformations for Rail Transportation)
Período documentado: 2017-11-01 hasta 2018-10-31
Interoperability refers to the ability of devices or systems to participate in the coordinated execution of tasks and functions in some business process, in which data/information exchange happens in a transparent way, according to common protocols and formats. In fact, interoperability is achieved when the partners involved in the data/information exchange agree on the common information model and on the interfaces between their systems.
While interoperability can be achieved at the “syntactic” level, a full interoperability should be sought at “semantic” level, i.e. when interoperating systems are able to interpret the exchanged information automatically and meaningfully, so that exchanged messages are unambiguously defined and understood by the different parties.
The design of the Interoperability Framework (IF) element of the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan, and its initial implementation in the IT2Rail project, one of the “Shift2Rail lighthouse” projects, addresses these issues through the creation of an explicit, formal, shareable, machine-readable and computable description of the semantic reference model associated with data descriptions and exchanges; the ultimate goal is to allow for a higher degree of automation of distributed processes across multiple data formats and spanning unspecified actors.
These formal, explicit, machine-readable descriptions, in the form of domain ontologies, are maintained, stored and made accessible by the IF’s ontology repository and used to ‘annotate’ web services in the IF’s semantic web service repository.
Transforming and translating across different data formats requires an understanding of the domain concepts, facts or events that are represented by those formats. Whenever data items are associated with the machine-readable semantics provided by domain ontologies and mappings between them, this transformation can be automated through the use of computer-enabled semantic matching technologies.
Although more complex than data transformation, this is another instance of semantic matching, i.e. identifying compatible services or compositions of services based on logical statements, amenable to machine-processing, which describe the services capabilities, i.e. the services compatibility features, or the data transformations required to make them compatible. This is also already developed in part in IF component of the IT2Rail project, where semantic matching is used to identify services that can provide travel offers on end-to-end routes.
The ST4RT project proved the effectiveness of semantic-based data transformation by (a) defining a generic process to design, develop and deploy semantic “converters”, (b) developing a reference implementation of a semantic “converter” and customising this implementation in actual use cases for a specific pair of data formats involved in an exchange, e.g. in an after-sales transaction, and (c) deploying and evaluating the semantic-based data transformation. The demonstration use cases did not only involve data transformation, but also took into account the transactional nature of the considered exchange process, thus soliciting and exploiting both the semantic transformation at data level and at web service level.
The project experimented and evaluated the semantic interoperability approach described above. A global methodology was established, which could be applied to any scenario of semantic transformation. The designed methodology was then applied to a concrete cases of information exchange, by setting up proper tools for both the creation of the mappings and the actual transformation at the message level.
While interoperability can be achieved at the “syntactic” level, a full interoperability should be sought at “semantic” level, i.e. when interoperating systems are able to interpret the exchanged information automatically and meaningfully, so that exchanged messages are unambiguously defined and understood by the different parties.
The design of the Interoperability Framework (IF) element of the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan, and its initial implementation in the IT2Rail project, one of the “Shift2Rail lighthouse” projects, addresses these issues through the creation of an explicit, formal, shareable, machine-readable and computable description of the semantic reference model associated with data descriptions and exchanges; the ultimate goal is to allow for a higher degree of automation of distributed processes across multiple data formats and spanning unspecified actors.
These formal, explicit, machine-readable descriptions, in the form of domain ontologies, are maintained, stored and made accessible by the IF’s ontology repository and used to ‘annotate’ web services in the IF’s semantic web service repository.
Transforming and translating across different data formats requires an understanding of the domain concepts, facts or events that are represented by those formats. Whenever data items are associated with the machine-readable semantics provided by domain ontologies and mappings between them, this transformation can be automated through the use of computer-enabled semantic matching technologies.
Although more complex than data transformation, this is another instance of semantic matching, i.e. identifying compatible services or compositions of services based on logical statements, amenable to machine-processing, which describe the services capabilities, i.e. the services compatibility features, or the data transformations required to make them compatible. This is also already developed in part in IF component of the IT2Rail project, where semantic matching is used to identify services that can provide travel offers on end-to-end routes.
The ST4RT project proved the effectiveness of semantic-based data transformation by (a) defining a generic process to design, develop and deploy semantic “converters”, (b) developing a reference implementation of a semantic “converter” and customising this implementation in actual use cases for a specific pair of data formats involved in an exchange, e.g. in an after-sales transaction, and (c) deploying and evaluating the semantic-based data transformation. The demonstration use cases did not only involve data transformation, but also took into account the transactional nature of the considered exchange process, thus soliciting and exploiting both the semantic transformation at data level and at web service level.
The project experimented and evaluated the semantic interoperability approach described above. A global methodology was established, which could be applied to any scenario of semantic transformation. The designed methodology was then applied to a concrete cases of information exchange, by setting up proper tools for both the creation of the mappings and the actual transformation at the message level.
The main objective of ST4RT was to develop a demonstrator tool providing ontology-based transformations between different standards and protocols.
Specific objectives were:
- The analysis of availability and maturity of semantic transformation tools and technologies;
- The design of methodologies for annotation/mapping between legacy data models and ontologies;
- The development of extensions to the IT2Rail reference ontology;
- The development of mapping between the IT2Rail reference ontology and legacy data models;
- The development of KPIs and Metrics for the transformation evaluation.
All above-mentioned objectives have been achieved.
What can be highlighted is that the mechanisms taken from the IT2Rail project, regarding the reference ontology, have been extended and integrated in the ST4RT approach. More precisely, a decision was made to rely on an “integrated ontology” approach, where a ST4RT-specific ontology is built, which integrates – and modifies – the reference ontology. This allows greater flexibility and independence from the evolution of the IT2Rail ontology.
Based on this architecture, a few concepts, which were missing from the IT2Rail ontology, have been added, especially to handle the concept of messages/requests. At the same time, the mapping exercise between FSM and 918 concepts has highlighted a number of refinements that should be applied to the IT2Rail ontology and exploited by the other relevant CFM projects of Shift2Rail IP4.
Specific objectives were:
- The analysis of availability and maturity of semantic transformation tools and technologies;
- The design of methodologies for annotation/mapping between legacy data models and ontologies;
- The development of extensions to the IT2Rail reference ontology;
- The development of mapping between the IT2Rail reference ontology and legacy data models;
- The development of KPIs and Metrics for the transformation evaluation.
All above-mentioned objectives have been achieved.
What can be highlighted is that the mechanisms taken from the IT2Rail project, regarding the reference ontology, have been extended and integrated in the ST4RT approach. More precisely, a decision was made to rely on an “integrated ontology” approach, where a ST4RT-specific ontology is built, which integrates – and modifies – the reference ontology. This allows greater flexibility and independence from the evolution of the IT2Rail ontology.
Based on this architecture, a few concepts, which were missing from the IT2Rail ontology, have been added, especially to handle the concept of messages/requests. At the same time, the mapping exercise between FSM and 918 concepts has highlighted a number of refinements that should be applied to the IT2Rail ontology and exploited by the other relevant CFM projects of Shift2Rail IP4.
By developing demonstrator converters that provide automatic semantic transformations between different messaging standards and protocols involved in the execution of complex after sales processes, the project extended the capabilities of the IF and its application to real business process scenarios across different data exchange formats, and particularly to the TAP-TSI specification.
The successful implementation of the project results will:
1. Generate an acceleration factor for the adoption of the TAP-TSI specification and its compatibility with the overall objectives of Shift2Rail IP4.
2. Create added value and therefore an incentive for the adoption of the IF by participating actors in the supply chain of multi-modal passenger services.
3. Contribute to the creation and delivery of advanced, information-rich “any”-modal mobility services by reducing the costs of ICT interoperability and therefore generating economic incentives to shifting ICT investment from solving interoperability problems to creating and exploiting benefits from digitalisation of the supply chain.
4. Contribute to the development of a competitive market of specialist interoperability solution providers through the provision of a vendor- and architecture-independent specification of cross-standard converter technology based on mature, open semantic web technology and standards and formal, explicit and machine-readable descriptions of conversion logics through a shared reference ontology.
5. Minimise the need, and therefore the organisational, economic and time costs, for centrally coordinated development and deployment roadmaps of the interoperability solutions, which currently limit the scope, the reach and the timeliness of the provision of advanced passenger mobility services to the market.
The successful implementation of the project results will:
1. Generate an acceleration factor for the adoption of the TAP-TSI specification and its compatibility with the overall objectives of Shift2Rail IP4.
2. Create added value and therefore an incentive for the adoption of the IF by participating actors in the supply chain of multi-modal passenger services.
3. Contribute to the creation and delivery of advanced, information-rich “any”-modal mobility services by reducing the costs of ICT interoperability and therefore generating economic incentives to shifting ICT investment from solving interoperability problems to creating and exploiting benefits from digitalisation of the supply chain.
4. Contribute to the development of a competitive market of specialist interoperability solution providers through the provision of a vendor- and architecture-independent specification of cross-standard converter technology based on mature, open semantic web technology and standards and formal, explicit and machine-readable descriptions of conversion logics through a shared reference ontology.
5. Minimise the need, and therefore the organisational, economic and time costs, for centrally coordinated development and deployment roadmaps of the interoperability solutions, which currently limit the scope, the reach and the timeliness of the provision of advanced passenger mobility services to the market.