NOTAM Ontology Version 0

This document provides preliminary versions of two OWL ontologies:

NOTAMONT - an ontology for NOTAMS.
AIXMONT - an ontology algorithmically derived from the AIXM edition 3.3 XML Schema.

These ontologies are extremely preliminary, but should provide a point for further discussion and refinement.

NOTAM Ontology

BBN's OWL NOTAMS project has been studying NOTAMS since August, 2002. We have collected over 3.5 million NOTAMS. The goal of the project is to make existing NOTAMS machine understandable. To each NOTAM, we apply a sequence of over 250 pattern matching rules, followed by a set of normalizations, to produced an XML "annotation" That shows information extracted from the NOTAM.

So, for the following NOTAM, which describes a vertical obstruction:

B6978/04 NOTAMN Q) LIMM/QOLAS/IV/M/AE/000/999/4401N01236E001 A) LIPR
B) 0410131502 C) 0410201415EST E) LATTICE TOWER PSN 440121N0123607E
HGT 31M/103FT AGL 39M/130FT AMSL OBST LGT OUT OF SER. REF AIP AGA
2-38.9

we produce the following annotation:

<NormalizedDAML>
  <Notam>
    <Header>
      <head>B6978/04 NOTAMN </head>
      <sectionQ>Q) LIMM/QOLAS/IV/M/AE/000/999/4401N01236E001 </sectionQ>
      <sectionA>A) LIPR </sectionA>
      <sectionB>B) 0410131502 </sectionB>
      <sectionC>C) 0410201415EST </sectionC>
      <sectionE>E)</sectionE>
    </Header>
    <GroundObstructionLightStatusReport>
      <obstructionDescriptionOf>
        <GroundObstructionDescription>
          <obstructionOf>
            <GroundObstruction>
              <typeOf>
                <Obstacle>LATTICE TOWER </Obstacle>
              </typeOf>
            </GroundObstruction>
          </obstructionOf>
          <locatedAt>
            <GeoPoint2D>
              <geoPositionDescriptionOf>
                <LatLon>
                  PSN 
                  <lat>440121N</lat>
                  <lon>0123607E </lon>
                </LatLon>
              </geoPositionDescriptionOf>
              <latitudeOf>44.0225</latitudeOf>
              <longitudeOf>12.601944444444444</longitudeOf>
            </GeoPoint2D>
          </locatedAt>
          <altitudeDescriptionOf>
            <GeoAltitudeDescription>
              <heightWd>HGT </heightWd>
              <lengthOf>
                <Length>
                  <descriptionOf>
                    <LengthDescription>
                      <magnitudeOf>31.0</magnitudeOf>
                      <unitOf>METER</unitOf>
                      <rawDescriptionOf>
                        <LengthDescription>
                          <magnitudeOf>31</magnitudeOf>
                          <unitOf>M</unitOf>
                        </LengthDescription>
                      </rawDescriptionOf>
                    </LengthDescription>
                  </descriptionOf>
                </Length>
              </lengthOf>
              <altitudeOriginOf>AGL </altitudeOriginOf>
              <lengthOf>
                <Length>
                  <descriptionOf>
                    <LengthDescription>
                      <magnitudeOf>39.0</magnitudeOf>
                      <unitOf>METER</unitOf>
                      <rawDescriptionOf>
                        <LengthDescription>
                          <magnitudeOf>39</magnitudeOf>
                          <unitOf>M</unitOf>
                        </LengthDescription>
                      </rawDescriptionOf>
                    </LengthDescription>
                  </descriptionOf>
                </Length>
              </lengthOf>
              <altitudeOriginOf>AMSL </altitudeOriginOf>
            </GeoAltitudeDescription>
          </altitudeDescriptionOf>
          <markingOf>
            <Obstacle>OBST </Obstacle>
            LGT 
            <OTSStatus>OUT OF SER. </OTSStatus>
          </markingOf>
        </GroundObstructionDescription>
      </obstructionDescriptionOf>
    </GroundObstructionLightStatusReport>
    <AipPublication>
      REF 
      <sectionOf>AIP AGA 2-38.9</sectionOf>
    </AipPublication>
  </Notam>
</NormalizedDAML>

The NOTAM ontology was developed using this annotation as a starting point.

AIXM Ontology

The AIXM ontology was derived algorithmically from the AIXM 3.3 XML schema found at http://www.eurocontrol.int/ais/aixm/exchange/aixmxml.zip. The AIXM schema classes are not in a type hierarchy. We developed a class hierarchy using the following transformations:

A set of classes and their properties was extracted from the AIXM-Features.xsd file.
For each property, the set of classes that have that property was computed, and properties that have the same set are merged into "property groups". For example, the geoLat_geoLongPG class provides properties geoLat and geoLong.
Each of the orginal classes is made a subclass of each property group class that it requires the properties of.
Sets of property group classes used by more than one class are made superclasses of a classed named "G" where n is a number. Tus these classes require multiple inheritance. For example, the class G1 is a subclass of codIdPG, geoLat_geoLongPG, and midPG.
The types in the AIXM-Update-DataTypes.xsd file was converted into subclasses of ComplexType, or SimpleType as appropriate.
Some properties have more than one value type. Such types made to be subclasses of a super class named <propertyName>Type.
The original criptic three letter feature names were maintained, though it might be more informative to use their entity names.

Using Protege OWL

The Protege ontology editor is a convienient tool for viewing these ontologies. Download the 2.1.2 version of Protege from http://protege.stanford.edu/download/release/full/.

To view an ontology in Protege,

Click on Project/Build New Project...
Select "Owl File" as the format and click OK.
Enter the url of either ontology:
- http://openmap.bbn.com/~kanderso/notam/ontology0/notamont.html
- http://openmap.bbn.com/~kanderso/notam/ontology0/AIXM.owl
and click OK.

Useful Links

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ The W3C Semantic Web.
http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/tutorial/ Editing OWL Ontologies with Protege.
http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/ The Semantic Web: An Introduction.
http://www.w3schools.com/rdf/ W3C RDF Tutorial.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/frauenfelder1004.aspTechnology Review interview with Tim Berners-Lee.
http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~champin/rdf-tutorial/rdf-tutorial.html RDF Tutorial.