NISTIR 7945

NIST Ontological Visualization 

Interface for Standards:

User’s Guide

David Lechevalier

Anantha Narayanan

KC Morris

Sean Reidy

Sudarsan Rachuri
NISTIR 7945

NIST Ontological Visualization 

Interface for Standards:

User’s Guide 

David Lechevalier 

Anantha Narayanan

KC Morris

Sean Reidy

Sudarsan Rachuri

Systems Integration Division

Engineering Laboratory

June 2013

U.S. Department of Commerce 

Cameron F. Kerry, Acting Secretary

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Patrick D. Gallagher, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director
ii

Executive Summary

The NIST Ontological Visualization Interface for Standards (NOVIS) was developed at 

the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to provide an interactive 

visual interface to the terminology used in a variety of standards related to sustainable 

manufacturing. The area of sustainable manufacturing is rapidly evolving and includes a 

network of information standards that define the language of discourse for this new area. 

Traditional document style standards and dictionary style definitions are very limiting 

when it comes to getting a holistic picture of the sustainability landscape for 

manufacturing. The task of understanding the challenges in achieving a sustainability 

objective is very difficult when non-experts have to browse through several pages of 

document standards to find relevant information. The NOVIS tool provides a means for 

people to interactively visualize, browse, and query these standards. Furthermore, while 

the tool presented here supports the area of sustainable manufacturing specifically, its 

applicability is not limited to that area. This paper describes how to use the NOVIS tool 

and includes an example of how to use the tool to support sustainable manufacturing.
iii

Table of Contents

1 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................................................1

2 SYSTEM ENVIRONMENT AND INSTALLATION......................................................................................2

3 USER INTERFACE.............................................................................................................................................2

3.1 VIEWING A TERMINOLOGY GRAPH AND THE NOVIS MAIN WINDOW ....................................................................... 2

3.2 LOADING AN ONTOLOGY................................................................................................................................................... 4

3.3 NAVIGATING THE GRAPH PANEL..................................................................................................................................... 5

3.4 CUSTOMIZING THE VISUALIZATION ................................................................................................................................ 6

3.4.1 Using the visualization options ....................................................................................................................6

3.4.2 Changing the view settings ............................................................................................................................9

3.5 USING THE QUICK SEARCH FEATURE ............................................................................................................................10

3.6 CREATING AN ADVANCED SEARCH QUERY...................................................................................................................10

3.7 EXPORTING NODES INTO AN HTML DOCUMENT/EXCEL SPREADSHEET...............................................................13

4 MANUFACTURING EXAMPLE....................................................................................................................14

5 NOVIS ONTOLOGY AND ITS EXPANSION..............................................................................................16

5.1 EDITING THE ONTOLOGY................................................................................................................................................16

5.1.1 Adding an instance.........................................................................................................................................18

5.1.2 Adding the attributes for an instance .....................................................................................................19

5.1.3 Establishing a relation between two instances...................................................................................20

5.2 ADDING TERMS AND STANDARDS BY USING NOVIS IMPORT PLUGIN.....................................................................22

6 SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................................................26

7 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................................................26
1

1 Introduction

This document describes the functions of the NIST Ontological Visualization Interface 

for Standards (NOVIS). NOVIS was developed at the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology (NIST) to provide an interactive visual interface to the terminology used in a 

variety of standards related to sustainable manufacturing. The NOVIS tool, and a 

reference ontology comprised of a selected set of standards, was developed as part of the 

Sustainable Manufacturing Program [1] at NIST. The area of sustainable manufacturing 

is rapidly evolving and includes a network of information standards that define the 

language of discourse for this new area. Traditional document style standards and 

dictionary style definitions are very limiting when it comes to getting a holistic picture of 

the sustainability landscape for manufacturing. The task of understanding the challenges 

in achieving a sustainability objective is very difficult when non-experts have to browse 

through several pages of document standards to find relevant information. The NOVIS 

tool provides a means for people to interactively visualize, browse, and query these 

standards. Furthermore, while the tool presented here was developed to support the area 

of sustainable manufacturing specifically, its applicability is not limited to that area. This 

paper describes how to use the NOVIS tool and includes an example, which demonstrates

the features.

In brief, NOVIS works by visualizing the terminology found in different standards 

documents. The terminology is captured in an ontology [2] using the Web Ontology 

Language (OWL) [3]. The ontology forms a large and densely networked graph of terms. 

NOVIS presents portions of this dense graph that are relevant to a user’s request, and 

displays them visually using colored and labeled nodes and edges. Terms are represented 

as nodes in the graph. Edges are used to illustrate the relationships between terms. Other 

aspects of a term are represented as properties of the nodes. For example, each node has 

as a property a textual description that is the definition of the term. NOVIS supports the 

following functions: 

• an interactive visual interface for navigating large and dense networks of terms

• simple and advanced querying methods

• custom visualization controls

• the ability to export selected terms into other formats

The remainder of this document describes how to install NOVIS, the user interface, an 

example of using NOVIS, and finally how additional standards beyond those included in 

the software distribution can be added to the tool including those from other domains.

Most of the examples described in this document use standards from the International 

Organization for Standardization (ISO) [4]. OWL classes and properties in these 

examples are identified using an italicized font.
2

2 System environment and Installation

The NOVIS tool runs on Java [5] version 1.6 or higher1. To install Java, visit 

http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp and follow the instructions. Once Java is 

installed on your computer, you can launch the NOVIS application by double clicking on 

the NOVIS Java Archive (JAR) file.

The NOVIS tool was developed using Protégé [6] for creating and adding to the OWL 

ontology. The visualization interface is based on a Java Application Programming 

Interface (API) called Prefuse [7]. These packages are not necessary to use the 

application but modifications to the application would use these tools. The use of 

Protégé for expanding the ontology is discussed in section 5. Other software that 

interfaces with the tool includes HyperText Markup Language (HTML) browsers and 

Microsoft Excel. These interfaces are discussed in section 3.7.

3 User Interface

This section describes the NOVIS user interface and its basic operations including:

• viewing a terminology graph

• loading an ontology

• navigating the graph

• customizing the visualization

• using the quick search feature

• creating an advanced search query

• exporting nodes to an HTML document, and exporting nodes to an Excel

spreadsheet

The NOVIS application is controlled through the main window, which presents a view of 

the terminology graph. From this window, you can open windows for advanced view 

control and advanced search queries. The main window displays the graphical 

representation of the selected node, with panels showing a color key and additional node 

information. The advanced view control window lets you control various viewing 

options. The advanced search query window contains a series of fields into which you

can input specific search criteria. 

3.1 Viewing a terminology graph and the NOVIS Main window

NOVIS’ main window is a clickable interactive interface. The window displays concepts 

from the ontology used to capture the terms from standards. The concepts are presented 

as a graph where the nodes represent not only individual terms but also standards and 

 1 Certain commercial software products are identified in this paper. These products were used only for 

demonstration purposes. This use does not imply approval or endorsement by NIST, nor does it imply that 

these products are necessarily the best for the purpose.
3

other concepts. Edges represent relationships between these concepts. The ontology is 

described in more detail in section 5. Figure 1 below illustrates the main window.

Figure 1 The NOVIS Main window

Area 1: Graph panel. This area contains the graphical representation of a selected node. 

Area 2: Selected node. The selected node, in this case, impact category, is displayed in 

bold in the center of the graph panel.

Area 3: Properties of the selected node. This area displays the properties of impact 

category, such as name and definition. You can click on the text highlighted in blue in 

the definition property to either visit another node or be taken to a web page on one’s

internet browser.

Area 4: Object properties of the selected node. The other nodes, surrounding the selected 

node, are connected to it via object properties. The nature of the relationship between the 

two nodes is shown when the mouse pointer hovers over either term, or by referring to 

the key panel shown in Area 5.

Area 5: Key panel/quick search result. There are two tabs for this panel. The first one, 

“KeyPanel,” displays the legend for different types and relationships. For example, 

impact category is in purple because it is a Term. The second tab lists the results of the 

quick search entered in Area 7. You can click on the various results to select and display 

those nodes in Area 1.

3

5

7

1

2

4

6
4

Area 6: Visualization options. In this area you can select how many terms to show on 

the graph at once, or group all of the related nodes by a common property (e.g., the 

standards the terms are contained in). The use of this area is described in more detail

below in Section 3.4.

Area 7: Quick search field. You can perform quick searches for nodes based on a node’s 

name. The results are shown in Area 5.

3.2 Loading an ontology

The NOVIS distribution comes with ontologies that represent publically available 

standards for sustainable manufacturing. NOVIS can be used to generally display 

ontologies of terminologies but the ontologies must conform to certain conventions. 

These instructions assume a working knowledge of ontology definition in OWL. To load 

your own OWL ontology it must meet the following two requirements. Your ontology 

will meet these requirements if you follow the editing steps described below:

• The top level classes in the ontology must be subclasses of the Thing class by 

explicitly asserting that these top level classes are subClassOf of the Thing

class. 

• A data property called name is needed for all the individuals. The domain of 

this property will be Thing and the range will be String. This data property 

must contain a value for each individual and that value will be the name of the 

term being represented.

The ontologies in the distribution or any ontology that conforms to these conventions 

may be loaded into NOVIS by following the steps shown in Figure 2 below.

1. Select “File”.

2. Select “Load data”.
5

3. Open the 

“sustainableTaxonomy.owl” file 

provided with NOVIS, or choose 

your OWL file from the directory.

Figure 2 Loading data

3.3 Navigating the graph panel

The graph panel shows a term and its immediate relations as in Figure 3. It is navigated 

by clicking on any of the terms. To navigate to any individual shown on the graph, 

simply click on it. That individual will become the new selected node. You can also 

drag any of the individuals across the graph pane. To zoom in, scroll down on the scroll 

wheel. To zoom out, scroll up. Click on the blue links in the information panel to travel 

to that individual. To view the object properties of the selected individual, hover over it, 

and the properties will be shown in the center of each edge.

Figure 3 Navigating the graph panel
6

3.4 Customizing the visualization

As the size of the ontology expands, the graph visualization can quickly get unwieldy. 

To address this there are a number of ways to customize the view. There are settings 

associated with the view that can be changed so as to limit the amount of information 

displayed and to change how it is displayed. These features are described here.

3.4.1 Using the visualization options

The visualization panel gives more option to browse the graph. It contains four areas as 

shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Visualization options

Area 1: Previous/Next node. The ‘<<’ and ‘>>’ buttons allow you to review previously 

navigated nodes. They function like the ‘history’ buttons on a web browser.

Area 2: Group By option. Figure 5 lists the types of relationships available in the 

ontology. When you choose a relationship the terms are highlighted that are related to the 

same target through this relationship. This option can be useful if many nodes are 

displayed and you want to see a subset related by a specific relationship. 

Figure 5 Available relationships

When you chose a relationship, for example termInStandard, another drop-down menu 

appears on the top right of the graph panel as is shown in Figure 6. This button allows 

you to define the target of the relationship. Suppose you want to group nodes that have 

the target “ISO 14065:2007” for the relationship termInStandard. Choose that value 

from the drop down list. The visualization is then updated by highlighting the nodes 

matching your request as shown in Figure 7. The other nodes become faded. In the 

example shown, it appears that “appeal”, “accreditation body” and “accreditation” are 

terms included in the standard “ISO 14065:2007”.

1 2 3 4
7

Figure 6 Drop-down menu for update
8

Figure 7 Graph panel after update
9

Area 3: Number of displayed terms. By default, ten terms are displayed at a time. The 

values in this area allow you to change the number of visible terms. This improves clarity 

by limiting the number of shown terms. 

Area 4: Previous/Next terms. This button enables you to display the previous or next set 

of terms sorted in alphabetical order and related to the selected node.

3.4.2 Changing the view settings

The visualization application uses a force directed layout algorithm [8] to present the 

selected portion of the information network. The algorithm applies attractive and 

repulsive forces to the nodes and edges displayed, and when these forces are balanced, 

the nodes arrange themselves into a visually pleasing orientation. The advanced view 

control allows you to adjust the parameters of the force directed layout algorithm, 

providing custom control over the visualization. The advanced view control window

shown in Figure 8 is located as follows:

1. Select “View”.

2. Select “Advanced control”.

3. Change the settings to your 

choosing. Dragging the slider 

along each line will change these 

settings. The “Reset” button resets 

the parameters to their default 

values.

Figure 8 Advanced view control window
10

3.5 Using the quick search feature

The quick search allows you to look for a node that you know by name. It is based on a 

partial string match. For instance, if you type “bo” then the search returns every node 

with a name containing this string such as “bold”, “bonding” or “ boundaries”. This quick 

search shown in Figure 9 is different from the advanced search because you have to know 

the name of the node that you are looking for. It does not use the relationships established 

in the ontology.

1. Select the field for the quick search.

2. Type in the name of the individual 

you are looking for

3. Refer to the results panel on the 

bottom to see list of matches.

4. Click on a result in the list to view 

the node in the graph panel.

Figure 9 Quick search mechanism

3.6 Creating an advanced search query

The advanced search allows you to find all the nodes matching specific criteria. It is 

based on a query to look for individuals in the ontology through its relationships and 

attributes. We provide an interface to specify the relationships, the attributes, and their 

values. The application lists all the nodes matching this request. The advanced search 

supports more powerful requests than the quick search by using the semantics of the 

ontology. It also enables you to find a term without knowing its name. The window for 

the advanced search query is shown in Figure 10. The interface allows you to add 

predicates to your constraint. You can add three kinds of constraints. The first constraint 

is the constraint “Type” which refers to the classes in the ontology such as Standard, 

Term etc. “Property” is the second constraint and refers to the data properties of the 

ontology like definition or source. Finally you can also add a constraint “Relation” which 

refers to the object properties of the ontology. The properties termInStandard and 

appliesTo are two different object properties of the ontology.
11

Figure 10 Advanced search window

Area 1: Query specifications. You can enter constraints for the search result here. The 

steps for creating a query are described later.

Area 2: Add/Remove buttons. You can choose to add or remove constraints to this query 

here, or clear the query entirely.

Area 3: Query text panel. You can see the actual text generated by the constraints 

entered in Area 1, as a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) [9] 

query. Currently, this field is not editable. Future versions may give advanced users the 

option of fine tuning their queries by editing the SPARQL query. 

Area 4: Results panel. The results of the query are displayed here. You can click on 

each of these to display the individual in the main window, or choose to view all of the 

nodes in the main window by clicking the “View all nodes” button.

The following steps, shown in Figure 11, describe how to perform an advanced search.

1 2

3

4
12

1. Select “Advanced Search”.

2. Select “Create query”.

3. To create your first constraint, 

first check the box.

4. Select the type of constraint 

you want: type (class), 

property (data property), or 

relation (object property).

5. Select the specific type, 

property, or relation you want 

your results to contain. The 

dropdown list shows the 

available types and properties 

in the currently loaded 

ontology.

6. Select the value for the

constraint. • “Type”: type in the 

partial or whole name

of your intended 

result.

• “Relation”: type in the 

partial or whole name 

of the individual you 

want your result to be 

related to.

• “Property”: type in the 

string you want your 

results’ property to 

contain.
13

7. Click “Add” to add any other 

constraints for your search. 

When you are done, press 

“Submit”. Results will be 

displayed in the table at the 

bottom of the frame.

Figure 11 Advanced search mechanism

3.7 Exporting nodes into an HTML document/Excel spreadsheet

To provide more readable document than an OWL file, we also provide an export 

mechanism. It allows you to export the attributes for all the nodes or a selected subset of 

them. Using this mechanism you can get the attributes for each node in a single HTML or 

Excel document. Figure 12 shows you the step to export the nodes.

1. If you are exporting only 

select nodes: select each 

node in the graph by 

holding “Ctrl” and clicking 

each individual. Selected 

nodes will be bolded and 

outlined. If you are 

exporting all nodes, nothing

needs to be selected.

2. Select “Export”.

3. Select either “Export as 

HTML file” or “Export as 

Excel file”.

4. Select whether to export 

only the terms you have 

selected, or all of the terms.
14

5. Designate where you want 

to save your file, and click 

“Save”.

Figure 12 Exporting nodes

4 Manufacturing Example

This section shows an example for using NOVIS. In this example, we assume a

manufacturer (that we are going to call the user) who wishes to evaluate his process’ 

energy efficiency. The user is looking for standards for help. The standard must be an 

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard.

To solve this problem, the user would create an advanced search query in NOVIS and 

would specify that he is looking for nodes that

• are Terms

• contain “energy” in their definition

• are in the terminology of standards with “ISO” in the name

• are related to indicators

Once the user gets our results, the user opens them in the graph panel to find the relevant 

standards. The advanced search window shown in Figure 13 illustrates constraints for the 

query. Different kinds of constraints are combined to model the request. The two terms 

matching with the query are displayed on the bottom of the frame. Figure 14 shows the 

resulting visualization. The user can see that the results are in the standard “ISO 

50001:2011”.
15

Figure 13 Example of query creation 

Figure 14 Results highlighting relevant standard
16

5 NOVIS Ontology and its Expansion

NOVIS currently comes with an ontology that contains terminology from a selected set 

of standards, along with some terminology from other sources. Details of the standards 

that are represented in the NOVIS ontology are described in the readme.txt file in the 

same folder. The supplied ontology is in OWL and may be expanded to include concepts 

and terminology from your own domain using a tool such as Protégé. This section will 

provide you some guidelines on expanding the ontology and use Protégé screen shots for 

illustration.

The most fundamental concept in the NOVIS ontology is Term. There are several 

relationships between this concept and the other concepts in the ontology, especially with 

the concept Standard. This relationship models that a term is in a standard or a term 

references a standard. Two different terms can also be related to each other either because 

they are similar or because one term references the other. Each relationship has a specific 

domain and a specific range. These concepts and relationships are described in greater 

detail in [2].

There are two ways to add new terminology to NOVIS:

• by directly editing the ontology;

• by using the NOVIS import interface for Excel files. 

Each of these is described in this section.

5.1 Editing the ontology

The NOVIS ontology can be expanded with concepts and terminology from your own 

domain. To expand on the ontology create a new instance in the ontology (using an 

ontology editor of your choice) and give each instance a value for the data property name. 

Recall that name is required property for the NOVIS application. Recall that the other 

requirement is that the new instance be a subclass of Thing. The instances that you create 

may be subclasses of one of the classes in the NOVIS ontology such as Standard or 

Term, in which case they will be derived from Thing. Finally, you will want to create 

relationships between your new instances. This is done through the object properties. 

Some relationships are defined in the NOVIS ontology as shown in Figure 16. When you 

add relationships, take note of the domains for the relationship types.

The following describes how NOVIS is expanded using Protégé. First load the OWL file

called “sustainableTaxonomy.owl” in Protégé. Once the file is loaded, you can browse 

the ontology. Figure 15 shows the NOVIS ontology in Protégé. The classes, object 

properties, data properties, and individuals tabs are our focus and are illustrated in Figure 

15, Figure 16, Figure 17, and Figure 18. Classes define the top level concepts in the 

NOVIS ontology. Individuals represent instances in the ontology. Attribute of instances 

are represented using data properties. Relationships are represented through object 

properties. 
17

Figure 15 Protégé class tab

Figure 16 Object property tab for termInStandard

Figure 17 Data property tab for name
18

5.1.1 Adding an instance

In Protégé an instance is called an individual. To add an instance, go to individuals tab.

On the left side you have all the classes of your ontology. When you select one of these 

classes such as Standard, all the instances of Standard appear in the members list. When 

you want to add another instance, you click on the button circled in red in the figure. 

Once you clicked on this button, another frame appears as is shown in Figure 19. On the 

bottom of this figure, you see a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is the URI of 

the instance. In the NOVIS import plugin described below the URI’s are made unique by 

appending a time stamp to the data property name. You may adopt this method or choose 

your own naming conventions but note that each URI must be unique. Once you have 

added the instance, it appears in your member list as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 18 Protégé individuals tab with ISO Standards and Publicly Available 

Specification (PAS) 2050 [10]
19

Figure 19 Window for creating a new individual

Figure 20 Added individual

5.1.2 Adding the attributes for an instance

Attributes are added as data properties. For each instance you must add an attribute name

in order to use the NOVIS application. Other attributes are specific to only a few classes. 

After selecting in Protégé the instance for which you want to add an attribute, click on the 

button circled in Figure 21 to add a new data property. When you click on this button the 

frame show in Figure 22 appears. From here choose the attribute that you want to use 

and then assign it a value as seen in Figure 22 and Figure 23.
20

Figure 21 Adding an attribute

Figure 22 Choose the attribute

Figure 23 Add the value of the attribute

5.1.3 Establishing a relation between two instances 

To relate an instance to another one you use object properties. Select the instance that 

will be the source of the relationship. Then click on the button highlighted in Figure 24 to 

add a new object property. Another frame appears as in Figure 25 and you choose the 
21

relationship and the subject of the relationship. You must be careful to use instances with 

a type matching the type previously defined for the domain of the relationship. For 

instance, for the relationship termInStandard the source of the relationship is a term and 

the target is a Standard. You can see the domain and the range of a relationship in the 

object properties tab. When you submit this addition, it appears on the main frame as 

shown in Figure 26.

Figure 24 Add a relationship

Figure 25 Choose the relationship and the target
22

Figure 26 Added relationship and attribute

5.2 Adding terms and standards by using NOVIS import plugin

The NOVIS distribution also contains a plugin for Protégé to enable adding

instances of Term and Standard in the ontology by using an Excel file. The plug in is 

packaged with the NOVIS application as a JAR file and is compliant with Protégé 

versions 4.1 and above. To use the plug-in, you need to add it in Protégé. To add the 

plug-in, put the jar file in the folder "plugins" of your Protégé installation. It is generally 

in C:\Program Files\protege_installation_folder\plugins as in Figure 27. When you open 

Protégé software, the plug in will appear as another button in the Tools menu as shown in 

Figure 28.

Figure 27 Add the plug-in in the Protégé plug-in folder

Figure 28 New menu item for importing the terminology
23

You just have to click on this button and choose your file to launch the plug-in. 

Figure 29 shows you the first frame which allows us to choose the file containing the 

terminology.

Figure 29 Choose the file

To import new instances, the first step is to create a spreadsheet in an Excel file which 

will contain the terms. The terms are defined by three attributes:

• name

• definition

• source

Moreover, a term can be contained in a standard and that must also be specified in the 

Excel file in this case. Figure 30 shows the Excel file template (that you can also find in 

the NOVIS package). The first column defines the name of the term. The second column 

is used for its definition and the third for its source. The last column specifies the 

standard in which the term is contained. Figure 31 shows an example spreadsheet 

containing several terms.

Figure 30 Import file template
24

Figure 31 Example of import file with several terms

To establish a relation between a word in the definition and an individual in the 

ontology (individual that already exists in the ontology, or that the Excel file is going to 

create), you can add a tag to specify this. The example in Figure 32 illustrates how the

term Bolt is connected to the term SampleTerm also in the Excel file. 

Figure 32 Adding a tag in the definition

Our file is now ready to be loaded. The plug-in imports the terms from the Excel file into

the ontology. It starts by adding every term in the ontology then establishing the different 

property for each created term. However, it returns a warning in the following cases:
25

• If none of the individuals in the ontology has a name attribute matching the 

tagged word, the tag is removed and the plug-in displays a warning.

• If there is more than one individual with a name attribute matching the tagged 

word, the plug-in uses the first one found and displays a warning.

Figure 33 and Figure 34 show you a file with several mistakes and the warning that the 

plug-in shows to you. Note all the terms are created—even the terms with a removed tag.

Here is an example:

Figure 33 Import file with mistakes or unknowns

Figure 34 Warnings
26

The imported instance data becomes part of the ontology and is automatically saved. In 

the ontology unique identifiers are assigned for each instance. Those will be visible 

when the ontology is opened in an OWL viewer.

6 Summary

In summary, this document described the features and functionality of the NOVIS tool 

for visualizing and querying standards terminology. We encode standards information 

into an ontology that captures terminology in standards, and their interrelationships with 

other terms and standards. The visual navigation mechanism of the NOVIS tool allows 

users to browse a network of standards terminology. The graphical interface presents 

easy access to terms and their definitions, and helps users find other related terms and 

standards by clicking and navigating through links between terms. The advanced query 

interface allows users to generate queries by defining predicates for their search criteria. 

The document also described a plug-in for Protégé which aids in adding new content 

from other standards into the ontology. These features can contribute to improved 

comprehension of information contained in standards, than what is possible by reading 

through textual documents. More work is being done on expanding both the ontology and 

the set of terminology that is being represented. Defining a robust ontology is key to 

enabling meaningful and useful searches of the terminology and will be the subject of 

future work and collaboration with partners involved in this area of research.

Disclaimer

Certain commercial products may have been identified in this paper. These products were 

used only for demonstration purposes. This use does not imply approval or endorsement 

by NIST, nor does it imply that these products are necessarily the best for the purpose.

7 References

1. Sustainable Manufacturing Program; [cited 2013]; 

http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/lifecycle/sustainable_mfg.cfm

2. What is an ontology;[cited 2013]; http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-anontology.html

3. OWL Web Ontology Language; [cited 2013]; more information at 

http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/.

4. International Organization for Standardization; [cited 2013]; more information at 

http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html

5. Java; [cited 2013]; available from http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp.

6. Protégé, [cited 2013]; available from http://protege.stanford.edu/

7. Prefuse information visualization toolkit; [cited 2013]; available from 

http://prefuse.org/.
27

8. Fruchterman, T. M. J. and Reingold, E. M. (1991), Graph drawing by forcedirected placement. Softw: Pract. Exper., 21: 1129–1164. doi: 

10.1002/spe.4380211102

9. SPARQL Protocol for RDF; [cited 2013]; more information at 

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-protocol/

10. Publicly Available Specification 2050; [cited 2013]; more information at 

http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/Browse-By-Subject/Environmental-Managementand-Sustainability/PAS-2050/