AIOTI Workshop on Semantic Interoperability for Digital Twins

Venue

Inria Campus
2004 route des Lucioles, Sophia Antipolis, France
Dates: 5-6 February 2025
(Full day on the 5th and finishing mid-afternoon on the 6th)

Call for Participation

We invite you to the AIOTI Workshop on Semantic Interoperability for Digital Twins, aimed at advancing the field of semantic interoperability and laying the groundwork for the next generation of information systems. This workshop is focused on finding practical solutions for real-world industrial challenges. Discussions will involve a mix of invited talks, breakout sessions, and community-submitted presentations, all aimed at addressing industrial needs for semantic interoperability. The workshop will provide ample opportunities for real discussions and will be followed up with a publicly available workshop report.

The workshop will be held exclusively in person, as the necessary discussions and exchanges cannot be effectively facilitated online. Therefore, a hybrid format will not be offered. However, some keynotes may still be held online.

Scope

The workshop will focus on solutions for industry along with encouraging greater take-up of semantic technologies, including controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and ontologies. Semantic interoperability is essential for supply chains as well as for repairs and recycling in relation to the plans for the circular economy as part of the EU’s Green Deal.

Semantic Interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data with a shared, unambiguous meaning. Achieving this is critical to opening up markets for services and data, avoiding fragmented data silos, and enabling seamless cross-domain data infrastructures. This workshop will also give special consideration to the role of Digital Twins, which represent virtual counterparts to real-world entities and provide additional capabilities like prediction, simulation, and automation.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

• State of the Art: Establishing a shared understanding of the current landscape of semantic interoperability.
• Success Stories and Best Practices: Showcasing successful implementations and identifying common practices, e.g., at GS1 and eclass.
• Challenges and New Technologies: Exploring what is missing and the potential contributions of emerging technologies, including AI and digital twins. Discussing metrics for evaluating the maturity of vocabularies, taxonomies, and ontologies.
• Roadmap and Next Steps: Concluding with recommendations for advancing the field and proposing a roadmap for future development.

Preliminary Outline Agenda

This is a preliminary structure which will be adjusted based upon the responses to the call for contributions.

1. Introduction to the workshop
2. AIOTI WG Standardisation and Semantic Interoperability Group Overview
3. AIOTI Ontology Landscape (Martin Bauer)
4. Data to Ontology Mapping Whitepaper (ongoing work, will be published before workshop) (Cornelis Bouter)
5. Keynotes and Panels (provisional and subject to change)
• GS1’s experience with managing vocabularies and anchoring semantics (Phil Archer)
• ECLASS and industrial taxonomies (Christian Block, Carolin Prinz) to be confirmed
• IDSA and semantic interoperability for dataspaces (Sebastian Steinbuß) to be confirmed 
• SAREF suite of ontologies (Cornelis Bouter)
• Smart Data Models, NGSI-LD (Alberto Abella, FIWARE)
• Asset Administration Shell (AAS) as standardised digital twin implementation for industry to be confirmed 
• Web of Things (Darko Anicic or Ege Korkan) to be confirmed
• CIM Model (Electricity/Energy) - Svein Olsen, Statnett TSO - CIM expert
• Ontology discovery with ontoportal.org, as used by agroportal to be confirmed
• OMG standards relevant to digital twins (Claude Baudoin)
• OMG Commons Ontology Library and related standards (Elisa Kendall)
• Ontology for Digital Thread, Lionel Bénéteau (SLB)
• Common Core Ontologies to be confirmed
6. Parallel Breakout Sessions (provisional, others to be added based upon participant suggestions)
• Best practices for vocabulary development along with metrics and metadata for different levels of maturity, discovery and trust
• Semantic interoperability in relation to generative AI
• Tooling for vocabulary development and discovery
• Steps to incorporate more semantics in your data
• Semantic Interoperability for Digital Twins
7. Plenary Session - Bringing It All Together
• Plenary discussion of the reports from the breakouts
• Summing up and concluding remarks

Suggestions for further sessions are welcomed as part of your expression of interest, see below.

Background Information

Semantic Interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous shared meaning. For explicitly representing shared meaning, ontologies play a key role. Other kinds of data models typically focus only on the syntactic representation, and the semantics is implicit or externally defined. Without clearly understood semantics, the reuse of data is not possible, resulting in a fragmented landscape of data silos that impede the development of cross-application and cross-domain data infrastructures. Thus, semantic interoperability is of critical importance to open markets of services and data.

Artificial Intelligence in general and generative AI based on large language models (LLMs) in particular are changing many aspects of our daily lives. Thus, the relation between generative AI and semantic interoperability needs further investigation. In what respect can generative AI help achieve semantic interoperability, or, the other way around, how can semantic interoperability support generative AI, or does generative AI even render semantic interoperability obsolete?

As more aspects of life become digitised, the complexity of systems and their need for interaction increase. To better manage this complexity, the concept of digital twins can be applied, which complements real-world assets, systems, and concepts with a digital counterpart. Digital twins provide additional capabilities like prediction, simulation, and automation, enabling us to manage the digital world as they directly correspond to what we know from the physical world. Semantic interoperability is key for digital twins, which is why they warrant special consideration in this workshop.

To facilitate the discovery and evolution of vocabularies, including controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, ontologies, and semantic models, we would like to discuss a rating system in terms of accompanying metrics to evaluate maturity and quality along with associated metadata. This can be considered as a two-dimensional description. The following are some initial ideas to seed discussion and can be expected to evolve considerably:

• ✴ Informal work by a handful of people/organisations on a vocabulary of mutual interest
• ✴✴ Work on vocabularies with limited usage, but with an open process and documentation
• ✴✴✴ Draft standard for vocabularies with a well-defined process for measuring usage
• ✴✴✴✴ Standard for widely used vocabularies with a well-defined process for revisions, governance, and community feedback
• ✴✴✴✴✴ SDO standard for a mature, stable vocabulary

This rating system aims to provide a clear path for the development and adoption of vocabularies, fostering trust and collaboration across industries and ensuring semantic interoperability is achieved effectively. To encourage re-use rather than re-invention, we need a common framework for describing vocabularies in terms of agreed metrics and metadata. That includes criteria for selecting vocabulary terms.

Call for Contributions

We are looking for presentations suitable for advancing the area of semantic interoperability that cover one or more of the following aspects:

• Identify Requirements: What is needed for semantic interoperability to succeed across different domains and systems?
• Present Success Stories and Best Practices: Share experiences from successful implementations to highlight valuable lessons.
• Showcase New Technologies: Demonstrate how recent advances, such as machine learning, generative AI, or digital twins, can contribute to solving industrial challenges.
• Analyse the Current Landscape: Provide insights on the status quo, and identify gaps and future steps.

The workshop will feature a mix of invited talks, selected papers, and community-driven contributions, fostering a collaborative environment with experts from industry, standardisation bodies, regulators, and more, with a focus on practical industrial applications.

Target Audience

The workshop is designed for participants from industry, standardisation bodies, industrial forums, regulators, and funding bodies, focusing on turning lessons learned into recommended practices for industry. While academia is welcome, the emphasis will be on addressing industrial needs and providing actionable solutions. Students are welcome subject to capacity limits.

Program Committee

Submit Your Expression of Interest

We look forward to advancing the discussion on semantic interoperability and digital twins together, laying the foundation for more integrated, efficient information systems. We invite you to submit an abstract of your proposed talk, panel discussion, or breakout session by 9 December 2024. Contributions will be reviewed by the steering committee to ensure alignment with the workshop's objectives and provide a valuable experience for all participants.

Your submission will be reviewed by the program committee, and we will then get back to you in late December to confirm your participation and provide details for payment of the €195 attendance fee, which will be waived for academic participants, students and keynote speakers.

Contact

For more information, please contact:
- Dave Raggett at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for all questions regarding the content and organisation of the workshop.
- Catherine Riou at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for all questions about logistics and on-site support.

We look forward to seeing you in Sophia Antipolis, on the French Riviera!

Transportation

How to get to the Inria centre at Université Côte d'Azur in Sophia-Antipolis by plane (nearest airport: Nice-Côte d'Azur), car, train and bus, see https://www.inria.fr/en/how-get-inria-centre-universite-cote-dazur-and-its-montpellier-antenna. 

An estimated taxi one way fare from the airport will range between €55–75 depending on traffic. The travel time will vary from 30 minutes to one hour.

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