Exploiting Semantics for e-Science on the Semantic Grid

In this paper we address the problem of exploiting semantics for e-Science [1] in the emerging future e-Science infrastructure - the Semantic Grid [2]. The discussion is taken in the context of Grid enabled optimisation and design search in engineering (“Geodise” project) [3]. In our work we have developed a semantics-based Grid-enabled computing architecture for Geodise. The architecture has incorporated a service-oriented distributed knowledge management framework for providing semantic and knowledge support. It uses ontologies as the conceptual backbone for information-level and knowledge-level computation. Geodise resources including computational codes, capabilities and knowledge are semantically enriched using ontologies through annotations, thus facilitating seamless access, flexible interoperation and resource sharing on the Grid. We describe ontological engineering work and various approaches to semantic enrichment in Geodise. The semantically enriched content together with the Semantic Grid paradigm have been used as the foundation for the development of an ontology-enabled Geodise problem solving environment prototype (PSE). We have partially implemented the workflow construction environment in the Geodise PSE in which semantics is exploited to describe, discover and compose engineering computation resources for engineering problem-solving.