EPA ORD NaKnowBase (NKB): Nanomaterial Database Semantic Web Integration for Access and Collaboration
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EPA ORD NaKnowBase (NKB): Nanomaterial Database Semantic Web Integration for Access and Collaboration
Slaughter, W.1 Beach, B.1 Chan, G.1,2 Boyes, W.3 Harten, P.4, Williams, A.5, Mortensen, H.M.3
1. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) appointee at Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA
2. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington, Seattle, WA USA
3. Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA
4. Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 26 West Martin Luther King Drive, MS 483, Cincinnati, Ohio 45268
5. Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA.
Engineered nanomaterials (ENM) are being developed for use in a wide variety of consumer and industrial applications. They can exhibit significantly different properties compared to their macro counterparts due to a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, enabling surface properties to dominate over bulk properties. The development and application of these particles is currently outpacing the ability of scientists to test their environmental and human health effects. US EPA has collected its research on nanomaterials into a database, NaKnowBase (NKB), which is under active development with the objective to facilitate open science and increase understanding of the health impacts of nanomaterials. NKB data focuses primarily on documenting nanomaterial studies, including nanomaterial chemistry. For this data to be useful for the exploration of the toxicological, environmental, and biological impacts of nanomaterials, it needs to be easily interoperable with databases that focus on biological and environmental context of materials. The lack of a consistent nomenclature across sources for ENM exacerbates difficulties in efficiently and accurately integrating data from separate data sources. Semantic web tools such as Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) address these data heterogeneity and interpolation issues. In the process of integrating EPA’s NaKnowBase (or any data) into an established semantic framework, a necessary step and development bottleneck is matching terms to their correct Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRI). The EPA Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA), as part of a broader effort to automate conversion of EPA SQL data into RDF, is developing software to match SQL-derived information with correct IRIs from specified ontologies. This software will expedite semantic integration for EPA NaKnowBase and other US federal databases as part of a US consortium effort. This abstract does not reflect EPA Policy.