22. January 2012
13:47
by: Alex Oberhauser

Networld Blog – Style and other minor changes

Today I have changed the style from the mobile device theme (with the Freerunner as mobile device) to a more neutral theme that fits better to the character of this blog.
Additional I have remove my private website (outdated) from the links and simplified the sharing possibility. Now you can find the share button on the right side (full functionality), a subset of social networks on the left side and the +1 Button on the bottom of each post.
The author information are now on the bottom of each post and not anymore in the right side-bar.

A project page for Sigimera was added.

The About page was rewritten completely.



Posted in Networld

19. January 2012
22:51
by: Alex Oberhauser

Sigimera Architecture 1.0 is dead – Long live Sigimera Architecture 2.0

Sigimera Logo

Sigmera is a Crisis Information Platform that combines community information with information from official sources. see Sigimera

After a few months of technology exploitation and a first proof-of-concept implementation our team has decided to shift the release of the first stable version in favor of more time for a complete re-design and re-implementation with a new architecture in version 2.0.

The reason is that the inferencing and reasoning part plays no role in the current version. That allows us to switch the technology from academic to well established enterprise software. More concrete that means that we change the underlying data storage from a triplestore (OWLIM) to NoSQL (Apache Cassandra). Another big change are the loosely coupled SOAP Services that handle the business logic. Completely hidden from the user and third-party developers, this decision allows us to easily extend our current platform and not less important to distribute it over different hosts. For example the storage part could run on one cluster, the crisis crawler on one and the crisis management part with the REST API on another.

Important for the new architecture is that all frontends are based on the REST API. The REST API should use a combination of different services on different hosts to gain optimal performance. The combination of enterprise architecture for the business logic, semantic for the data representation, NoSQL for the physical data storage and Web 2.0 technology for the frontends should make Sigimera to a very easy to use and flexible platform. At least from a technology point of view.

Another important part is that we try to combine the best part from the Semantic Web Community (e.g. ontologies for interchangeable data) with well-established technology (e.g. NoSQL database to achieve horizontal scalability).

Maybe the most important part is that we shift from an academic exercise to an usable platform for everybody.

The next few months will show if we have taken the right path or if we have to find a new one.  Feel free to read more about the current changes and how the old architecture has looked liked in our Wiki. If you have questions or feedback please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sigimera Architecture 2.0 – by Alex Oberhauser, 2011-01-19T22:51:00
Sigmera Crisis Information Platform Architecture 2.0 Review



Posted in Research, Sigimera Tagged

16. January 2012
16:03
by: Alex Oberhauser

Server Downtime

In the next days, starting from the 16. January, it is possible that the websites and services under networld.to and sigimera.org are partial offline. The reason are major changes in the server architecture as preparation for the Sigimera Release 2.0.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

EDIT:  Major changes accomplished! Not longer down times expected.



Posted in Administration Tagged

21. November 2011
09:12
by: Alex Oberhauser

Sigimera – Semantic Data Model

Sigimera Logo

The Crisis Information Platform, as described in previous blog entries on this site, consists of a SOAP backend, with an public accessible REST API. Another major part is the data representation, that is specified in RDFS/OWL. From the user representation to the representation of crisis, all data is defined as RDF Schema (partially if needed in OWL). If possible, existing ontologies are used and combined with Sigimera internally ontologies:

  • crisis.owl (prefix: crisis): Defines the schema of a crisis and related data. (Used third party ontology at the instance level: DuplinCore, FriendOfAFriend, … )
  • on-site.owl (prefix: on-site): Defines agents that act in a crisis, such as Rescuer, Victims, Drones. Currently this ontology is not used in the first release.
  • admin.owl (prefix: admin): Administration Ontology that defines Subscriber and missing properties for user handling.

The core concept is crisis:CrisisArea for a crisis entity (with crisis:DangerousZone for secondary crisis in the same area) and foaf:Agent for user that are related to one or more crisis and/or registered at our platform.

As triplestore OWLIM-Lite is used (for crisis information). The reason was the inferencing engine on default rule sets (OWL-Horst, OWL-DL, RDFS, …) and the possibility to extend this rule sets with own inferencing rules. One big challenge in the future will be the scalability of the triplestore when the number of triples and/or when the number of access per second rises. A solution is on the way…

More Information: [not-public]



Posted in Development, Research, Semantic Web, Sigimera Tagged , , , ,

17. September 2011
21:58
by: Alex Oberhauser

Sigimera – Short outlook to the first Crisis Information Platform BETA Release

Sigimera Logo

After the setup of a developer infrastructure, our team works toward a first release. The plan is to have a first beta release by the end of this year. To achieve this goal we are working on a suitable frontend, that should be easy to use, but powerful enough to have all relevant information on your fingertip. On the other side we are working on exporting the crisis data as linked data bubble and on a REST API for third party developers. The decision to release an API at this early stage should encourage developers to use the crisis services for amazing new types of applications.

More information about the current status you can find in our WIKI.



Posted in Development, Sigimera Tagged , , ,

17. July 2011
12:59
by: Alex Oberhauser

Sigimera – Crisis Information Platform

Sigimera Logo

The last few months I have worked on an approach for optimizing the information flow in crisis areas with the help of semantic technology. The outcome was the shift from a drone based framework, that aims to help on-site crisis staff, to a public available platform for everybody. The first phase of Sigimera (the project name), will be the launch of a portal that unifies different information sources, e.g. gdacs.org (nearly real time information from authorities), multimedia from the community (videos, pictures, messages), articles from newspapers, … . The main goal is to build an online community around the project, that brings people affected by crisis together with people that are able to help and inform outsider about the situation.

All information are semantically annotated and classified. This approach simplifies the evaluation of big data sets and optimizes the visualization of relevant information. The designed and build architecture allows a simplified frontend with a powerful backend. The backend allows enough room for extension, not only from a engineering perspective, but also from research side.

The following components are planned for the first BETA release:

  • Information website that simplifies the start for user, developer, researcher, …
  • User Management (with third-pary login and registration mechanism)
  • REST API for developers
  • Crisis dashboard recommendation that should give a first feeling what is planned and what could be done in future releases.
  • User feedback mechanism

The project is in a very early stage of development, although the current status gives a good overview what could be possible in the future.



Posted in Development, Networld, Research, Sigimera

10. April 2011
10:08
by: Alex Oberhauser

Facebook to Semantic Web

In the focus of my Context Computation Algorithm I have used the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) Ontology to extract the context information. That was fine for myself, because I have a pretty complete FOAF file that is public available, but a hurdle if the algorithm should work for generic end users. For this reason I have developed a small Facebook App that extracts the profile information to FOAF and the Wall entries to SIOC. Although it is a quick hack and not a nice planned software, it works pretty well and could directly used by the context computation algorithm and the Android FOAF Viewer. It is also published in the Facebook App Directory. If the interest in the App grows I consider to improve it and provide an API for third party software use.

Facebook FOAF Generator: No Storage, No Logging, No Temporary Files



Posted in Uncategorized

12. February 2011
23:23
by: Alex Oberhauser

Mikrokopter Project – Codename “Sigimera”

As you may know, if you follow the activity of Networld, our projects are fast changing and mainly only proof-of-concepts or projects with the purpose to improve the skills of the members. More general speaking we have a wide range of started project that are not really finished.

Now we have another great looking project… it is all about autonomous drones. On the base of the mirkokopter.de chipsets we fiddle on a Quadrokopter Prototype that final purpose should be to find human beings in crisis areas (e.g. after snow-slides or earthquakes).

The role of Networld is to develop a ground station that is able to evaluate the gained raw data, classify them and decide how to coordinate the helper on the ground and support them with useful information (e.g. picture of the ground, hotspots where hurt people are, …). As you can see on mikrokopter.de the hard- and software of the Quadrokopter is pretty good working. That allows as to focus on more higher level parts such as reasoning on the base of real time information from the drone. As reference platform we will use a Android Client (Smartphone and later maybe a Tablet) that allows us to control the Quadrokopter manually and in a later step semi-automatic.

In my eyes it is not a total new project from our perspective. As in our “Future House” project the main component is the context evaluation and the meaningful reasoning on this gained data. That means before we can work on a smart home or drone we have to focus the context handling part and build than on the base of the developed algorithms and implementation the software that suites for the concrete scenario.

Sometimes you have to make a detour to reach your goal.



Posted in Development, Future House, Mikrokopter, Mobile Devices, Networld, Research Tagged , ,

26. December 2010
11:02
by: Alex Oberhauser

FOAFViewer – Current Version v0.10

The v0.10 of the Android FOAFViewer exists now for approximately 6 months, but I have never presented here. The only blog entry about the FOAFViewer is the very first, very trivial and ugly prototype. So lets start with a short feature overiew:

  • Cleaner Interface.
  • Recursive Iteration over the friend relationships.
  • Caching mechanism (not the images) for offline view of your FOAF profile and that of your friends.
  • Location visualization with one click.
  • Share your FOAF link over all supported channels that are able to share text (e.g. bluetooth, short message, email, …)
  • Link to further information for the interests
  • Make a phone call directly from the application (starts the dialer app)
  • Fixed bug with Froyo 2.2
  • Not supported yet (very buggy) is the ability to add a FOAF profile to your contacts.

FOAFViewer Mainscreen

FOAFViewer Profile

Project Website: with more screenshots, installation package, more information…
Sourcecode: repos



Posted in Development, Mobile Devices, Semantic Web Tagged , , ,

16. November 2010
12:35
by: Alex Oberhauser

Future House: Splitting the project into subparts

Through the complexity of the “Future House” framework the project was split into three sub projects:

  • PCA (Personal Cyber Agent): The central control unit that is responsible for the smartness and information gathering/evaluation.
  • Identity Provider: A central identification framework that should manage the authorization/authentication of all agent that are related to a environment (such as the house).
  • Mobile Drone: On the base of a mikrokopter we are planning to build a semi-automatic drone that could be used for different tasks (e.g. communication, surveillance, …). This drone should be controlled by the PCA.

At the moment the Identity Provider, shortly IdP, is developed on the base of the SAML2 specification. The purpose of this component is to track user in the domestic environment to enrich the context information with real time information about the agents and there behaviour. The gained information are only saved in the local repository without connection to the outside world. Additional to assure no information leak the connection are secured with TLS and X.509 certification (the same implementation as used for the personal cyber agent).



Posted in Future House, Research Tagged , , , ,