SEON
An open-source digital platform, SEON supports finding and sharing knowledge and information. This will broaden the base of ecological understanding, cross disciplinary and sector-based siloes, and enhance ecosystem recovery. It will also secure the time, treasure, and emotion we have all made in our separate endeavors to restore, repair, and now, adapt to a new normal.
The Social Ecological Open Network (SEON) is an online platform intended to help share and access information and able to connect information in a variety of ways. SEON provides links to existing databases and analytical tools, plans and reports, as well as other information to help people better plan, support, and implement actions. The core concept for this open network was developed in a National Science Foundation project by Murphy, Hashisaki, and others (2019-2021).
The Social Ecological Open Network Community
The Social Ecological Open Network is an online platform for people and organizations to share data, knowledge, information, and ideas they have already stored on-line. It is a way for people to access, learn and ask questions of that data to further progress of individual and collaborative actions. This open network platform will provide a tool similar to Wikipedia for reading, uploading, editing, curating, and sharing information related to current and future-focused questions, formally connecting the concepts underlying the information. The public can ask detailed questions which the platform answers by exploiting logical and spatial relationships between categories of information stored in the platform. The SEON platform could provide a tool for users to evaluate data and tools (similar to consumer reports).
How information is stored in SEON
Information in SEON is stored in a type of database called a Knowledge Graph. Knowledge Graphs have a formal schema for categories of information and the links between them. For example, “National Estuary Program funds Near Term Action projects” relates a category, ‘program’, to that of a ‘project’, through the relationship ‘funds’. Real-world examples of categories are stored in the Knowledge Graph as “triples”. Such ‘subject-relationship-object’ triples link information together so that complex questions involving links between many concepts or categories can be posed. Tools in the platform translate a person’s questions into machine queries and return focused answers to them. In addition, as an interoperable platform, the SEON app can send and receive such machine queries from other systems so that questions can be answered by synthesizing information from multiple sources. Current concepts/categories in the schema include people, projects, organizations, tools, datasets, indicators, locations, best practices, and workflows. Other parties developing similar open networks are currently engaged in gathering information using this schema.
How do you question, explore and add information to the SEON Knowledge Graph?
A prototype web-based interface called the Knowledge Agent has been developed with support from the Suquamish Tribe as well as many others. The Knowledge Agent enables users to add information and to search for information. It uses AI to translate members questions into tight knit queries that are executed against the content stored in the Knowledge Graph. It is a closed system -- only information the community has added to the Knowledge Graph can be returned. These queries are semantic, and can traverse the linkages in the Knowledge Graph to provide sophisticated answers. These technologies are advancing at speed, so the platform is always evolving.
