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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] the next generation of Pc Design resources.
  • Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:08:02 -0500

christophe mckeon gonzalez de leon wrote:
In the case of PFAF (what an incredible resource - you should subscribe
to their mailing list) would a user seeking information from that
resource have access to the same search options with an OWL - PC DB that
they would through direct access to PFAF? As I understand it PFAF offers
a RBD user interface/front end. How would this be accessed through an
OWL interface?

yeah the pfaf web front end is just plain html. but you might be
talking about the windows executable front end they distribute? if so
that is less than useless. they offer the db itself minus the front
end as a download which is in microsoft access format and very crufty
internally (imho) for a fee. i actually already wrote some ruby
scripts to convert the entire thing to sqlite which is much more
useful.

as far as transforming it to rdf triples, there would be various ways
of approaching this, the best being to get permission to copy the
entire db over to some triplestore and to serve it up that way on the
web through a sparql endpoint and as html for users to update etc.
that would be what we would ideally want to do if the database were to
become open for many people to update. right now it's totally silo-ed.

actually i just reread their license, and as long as the site we are
running is not commercial and we share our additions and attribute the
authors, then we can do what we like with the data. they consider an
advertising driven site commercial. if the site were owned by a
non-for-profit and had advertising as a means of funding i think that
the pfaf people would probably be cool with that but we'd have to ask.

Back to square one, a host, ibiblio. Free and very nice. You would have a shell account there to do work. Lots of resources to use. I have an account there now. I own http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture. We could use that unless our own domain is needed. There's the beginnings of Wordpress/BBPress/Mediawiki at that location presently. Maybe this could be used also, why not. Mediawiki needs to be reinstalled. I own permacultureinfo.com which I will donate. ibiblio would host that for us for free except we would have to provide our own external nameserver, they provide everything else. If we had a .net, .info or .org they would provide a complete hosting package, free. Seems like everything is made to order if we use ibiblio. http://permaculture.info is there. This is PFAF's Rich Morris' work for the Permaculture Institute as part of the PC Plant DB project, the guilds/plant-animal relationships database.

- this seems like an opportune time to utilize the added capability of
OWL to go beyond the PFAF user interface and database engine to relate
and integrate PFAF data with that in other DB datasets on the Web or
other data sources in text format or

yep that's the idea. especially as data available in rdf becomes more
and more prevalent adding disparate datasources to the project will be
much more easily done if we are using semweb technologies. also if we
publish through a sparql endpoint then everything we have compiled
becomes grist for somebody else to very easily mashup.

There's the (part of the) deal with global users creating their own home in the database, benefiting everyone all other users as well as visitors
with their local data. Great possibilities there. I also like the idea you have described about triples; this opens the door to a comprehensive dataset, i.e. not just plants, animals, soil, water climate, cultural data but tools and their uses...

tool = scythe, eye hoe, spade fork, digging fork, digging spade, sickle,
crops = celeriac, ramps (you get the idea)
gardener = farmer
seeding rake
gardener needstool growscrops

marketfarm = farm
marketfarm = garden
plantingplan = croppingplan
GISfarmdataset = GISplantingplan

marketfarm needs GISfarmdataset producescrops
garden needsGISfarmdataset producescrops
farm needsGISfardataset producescrops

too simple but a starting point

A person wanting to take a complete inventory of his site can use GIS devices to locate and record site resources during a walkabout (Garmin
has some expensive units). Data can be stored in the unit then uploaded to a computer (probably USB) then into the appropriate GIS software.
Maybe this data could be uploaded to the PC OWL (O' Wise One) into that global users "home" describing his site; of course as long as that dataset contained at least some information that would be useful to others, i.e. timeless in nature. I don't know what format GIS software puts data in but maybe some GIS-PC OWL standards could be established,
or created on the fly by PC OWL. www.pcowl.org, maybe? I still have a list pc-knowledgebase, for end users of PC OWL, not developers, which is what PCDB is for.
Permaculture Knowledgebase Mailing List
A forum for the exchange and archiving of information about permaculture, scientific, indigenous and anecdotal.
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/pc-knowledgebase
open to anyone interested in this new project, whatever it is called, wherever it is hosted

... Think of an online knowledge system that becomes a global tool for
anyone to use for site development and maintenance, one that allows them
to enter, store, process and retrieve data about their site and region,
i.e. their homestead or farm, their community or town and their
bioregion.

that's pretty much exactly what i have in mind as well. the main thing
is that it must really be a useful and easy to use tool or else there
is little incentive for people to enter their own data. i'm thinking
two core predicates in a permaculture ontology can go a very long way,
namely 'needs' and 'yields'. if most resources in a db can have rdf
statements of the form x needs y and y yields z, then some pretty
powerful and not so complicated reasoners can be perched on top of
that to make suggestions and connections.

right now for example you have to go through the pfaf database and
make all the connections yourself. what if you looked up a plant, and
the system automatically showed you how that plant could fit in with
what you already have going on your site.

as an example, as a user you might have already made these rdf
statements (through a much less formal interface of course)

rdf statements or triples are in this form: subject predicate object

i haveTooMany chickens
i haveA pond
i need firewood
i liveIn "wonderland"

the system armed with some other triples somebody else has already encoded:

haveTooMany isEquivalentTo yields
chickens yield eggs
eggs yield eggShells
eggShells yield calcium
crayfish need calcium (for their shells after their molt)
james livesIn "wonderland"
james needs chickens
james hasTooMany trees
trees yield firewood
crayfish need ponds

the system could then infer a great deal as is plain to see. some
suggestions it could make are

that james who lives right near by might have firewood in exchange for
chickens.
that crayfish might be worth considering (because chickens yield eggs
which yield calcium which are good for crayfish and crayfish need
ponds which you already have).
etc..

this is with a tiny dataset and a poorly thought out ontology. what
about a huge dataset of triples and
a well thought out and much richer ontology. such a system could
potentially surprise even veteran
permaculturists with novel connections.

This is possible!
What great prospects. We should do this...
As I said last time, I need some online platform to host the permaculture and farming resources that I want to develop,
text and other media. I am a market farmer with intensely developed land. I want to document what goes on here and put that online.
I am into gardening toolmaking also.

This pc db project concept is like a bumblebee, doggedly pursuing
his work daily in season. I ran across Swedish for bumblebee and a great little UTube video - posted it to my Facebook page:
Interesting, Swedish for bumblebee is humlans... nice word. When you see them in summer, talk to them. "O' Humlans ..... aerial wizards, stewards of pollen and hives, bringer of powerful stings - make my flowers bloom, fill the air with the faint whisper of your wings in motion..." Actually they are pretty noisy. Nice video.....humlans at work on rhododendron flowers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mUIAxVWkcI&feature=related




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