Integrating Linked Data Search Results Using Statistical Relational Learning Approaches

Access to files

•   FULL-TEXT.PDF (pdf)

Abstract

Linked Data (LD) follows the web in providing low barriers to publication, and in deploying web-scale keyword search as a central way of identifying relevant data. As in the web, searchesinitially identify results in broadly the form in which they were published, and the published form may be provided to the user as the result of a search. This will be satisfactory in some cases, but the diversity of publishers means that the results of the search may be obtained from many different sources, and described in many different ways. As such, there seems to bean opportunity to add value to search results by providing userswith an integrated representation that brings together features from different sources. This involves an on-the-fly and automated data integration process being applied to search results, which raises the question as to what technologies might bemost suitable for supporting the integration of LD searchresults.In this thesis we take the view that the problem of integrating LD search results is best approached by assimilating different forms ofevidence that support the integration process. In particular, thisdissertation shows how Statistical Relational Learning (SRL) formalisms (viz., Markov Logic Networks (MLN) and Probabilistic Soft Logic (PSL)) can beexploited to assimilate different sources of evidence in a principledway and to beneficial effect for users. Specifically, in this dissertation weconsider syntactic evidence derived from LD search results and from matching algorithms, semantic evidence derived from LD vocabularies, and user evidence,in the form of feedback.This dissertation makes the following key contributions: (i) a characterisation of key features of LD search results that are relevant to their integration, and a description of some initial experiences in the use of MLN for interpreting search results; (ii)a PSL rule-base that models the uniform assimilation of diverse kinds of evidence;(iii) an empirical evaluation of how the contributed MLN and PSL approaches perform in terms of their ability to infer a structure for integrating LD search results;and (iv) concrete examples of how populating such inferred structures for presentation to the end user is beneficial, as well as guiding the collection of feedbackwhose assimilation further improves search results presentation.

Keyword(s)

Linked Data Search; Markov Logic Networks; Probabilistic Soft Logic; Statistical Relational Learning

Bibliographic metadata

Institutional metadata

Record metadata