permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

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