Sina Institute at Birzeit University, with the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation (CCHP) and University of Trento from Italy through its spin-off company OKKAM s.r.l, have deployed an innovative and pioneering electronic tourist guide for heritage sites in Bethlehem, using QR technologies. The initiative is part of the EU FP7 funded SIERA project.

The goal of the initiative is to enhance the experience of Palestine’s visitors and valorize the cultural heritage of Bethlehem City, through an innovative use of smartphones and tablets.

While walking in the old city, tourists can scan a QR code with smartphones and automatically listen to an audio guidance in their own language, as well as watch video and read further description, about a certain heritage site.

The initiative targeted 8 important locations of cultural and heritage significance in the city, including the Church of Nativity, Manger Square, and Star Street, among other locations.

Mrs. Nada Atrash, the Head of the Research and Training Unit at CCHP, indicated that the initiative stands as an innovative and simple facility to provide and spread information and guidance to the visitors of the city, refuting some parts of the Israeli propaganda that strives to damage the Palestinian history and culture. Mrs. Atrash indicated that the system has been used by hundreds of tourists already, despite its young age, where the free internet connection provided by Hadara ISP facilitated the adoption of the system.

The initiative has also been praised by Dr Hamdan Taha, the deputy minister of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Dr Taha expressed the ministry’s interest at the initiative, and hoped to extend its coverage to span the different touristic places in Palestine. Dr Taha also indicated that the initiative goes along the ministry’s plans to digitize and document the Palestinian narration through modern technologies, which should enrich the tourism industry in Palestine.

Dr Mustafa Jarrar, the director of Sina Institute at Birzeit University, stated that the QR scanning technologies has already been deployed at several domains. However, utilizing such technology within a multilingual and multimedia touristic guidance system is considered pioneering worldwide. Dr Jarrar illustrated that the initiative comes about as a result of the cooperation with Trento University in Italy and OKKAM s.r.l, which also included the Arabization of the OKKAM named entities system and enriching it with new Arabic content. Dr Jarrar concluded by stating that the initiative is still at its early stages, and hoped to extend the initiative for the remaining Palestinian sites.

After deploying the system in Bethlehem, Dr Paolo Bouquet, the professor at Trento University and the president of its spin-off company OKKAM s.r.l, expressed his contentment for the innovative and pioneering utilization of OKKAM’s platform within the tourism sector, and in Palestine in particular. Dr Bouquet explained that the system allows for dynamic content editing and modification, without having to replace the generated code. Moreover, the system doesn’t require any special software, where it can be used with any QR reader applications.

It is worth noting that, the developed system, in cooperation with OKKAM’s dynamic ObjectLinks framework, allows for bundling several media data and content types, accessible through a single QR code. The developed framework allows for dynamic content editing, which provides for efficient content generation and enhanced monitoring and statistics capabilities. The system was praised by the local and international tourists visiting Bethlehem, quoting that the new system was simple and easy to navigate, while providing very rich and multilingual content.

The initiative is part of the SIERA project at Sina Institute, which aims to  promote research cooperation with scientists around the world in the fields of Multilingual and Multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. The initiative comes about as a result of this international cooperation in the domain of knowledge sharing, which also aims at promoting Bethlehem as a center of international cultural and heritage significance.

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Secondary References:

	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode – macitynet.it (Archive)
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode (Archive)
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode (Archive)
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode (Archive)
	A Betlemme guida elettronica (Archive)
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode (Archive)
	Bethlehem electronic tourist guide created in Trentino
	Visitare Betlemme: dall’ateneo di Trento la guida che usa QRcode

Sina Institute for Knowledge Management and Arabic Technologies organized the 3^rd Palestinian Symposium on Computational Linguistics and Arabic Content, iArabic, on April 12^th. Dr Safa’a Nasser Eldin, the minister of the Palestinian Telecommunication and Information Technology Ministry, inaugurated the symposium, with the participation of many researchers of various Palestinian universities, institutes and companies, which discussed the latest researches and projects within the domain of Arabic language technologies.

Dr Henry Giacman, the Vise President of Academic Affairs at Birzeit University, then discussed the scientific research scene in Palestine. Dr Giacman stressed on the importance of supporting scientific research, and urged the Palestinian researchers to concentrate on the research problems relevant to the Palestinian and Arabic scopes, in addition to discussing the importance of cooperation and knowledge exchange between the Palestinian researchers.

Thirteen researches were presented at the iArabic symposium, divided into 5 sessions. The first session involved four researches concerned with the automated processing of Arabic speech and diacritics, and  the local Palestinian dialects, which was moderated by Dr Bilal Shafe. The second session, which was moderated by Dr Mahmoud Al-Saheb, concentrated at three practical applications and experiences from the local Palestinian scene, including a participation from the Palestinian Land Authority. The third session also discussed three researches on the topics of automatic summarisation and correction of Arabic texts, and was moderated by the researcher Nasser Zalmout. And finally, three researches were presented at the last session, which discussed the topics of automatic annotation of Arabic texts, an Arabic ontology for photos retrieval, and tools to enhance the quality of retrieved Arabic texts. The session was moderated by Dr Mahdi Arar.

Dr. Mona Diab,  from George Washington University in the US, presented the symposium’s keynote lecture entitled   “Computational Modeling of Socio-pragmatic language use in Arabic and English Social Media: Subgroup Detection”. The lecture was then followed by vibrant discussions with attendance regarding many of the points Dr Diab discussed at her lecture, which was moderated by Dr Bassem Sayrafi.

It is worth mentioning that the participating researchers came from diverse backgrounds, including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and statistics, among other fields. In addition to active participation from the Palestinian IT industry. The symposium was live streamed over the internet, and there were many contributions and participation from Gaza Strip, Egypt and the United States, via video conferencing.

See the photo album:  iArabic2014 

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	جامعة بيرزيت تنظم النّدوة السّنويّة الثالثة للسانيّات الحاسوبيّة والمحتوى العربي في فلسطين	Archive
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	Sina Institute organized the 3rd Palestinian Symposium “iArabic”
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Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering  and Arabic Technologies organized a workshop on proposal writing skills and the new European research funding program, Horizon 2020, on Wednesday April 2nd. The workshop was presented by highly experienced professionals in managing EU funded projects; Mr. Ruben Riestra from Spain, the evaluator and consultant for many EU funded projects, and Prof Paolo Bouquet, from the University of Trento Italy.

Dr Ali Jaber, the dean of Information Technology (IT) faculty at Birzeit University, first gave a brief speech about the research projects at the IT faculty, explaining that Birzeit University has a long and rich experience with EU funded projects. Dr Mustafa Jarrar, the director of Sina Institute and associate professor at the IT faculty, then presented Sina Institute and the current and previous EU funded projects that Sina Institute has been part of, both as a coordinator and partner. Dr Mustafa also discussed Sina Institute’s preparations for Horizon 2020, and the main research interests for Sina Institute at the upcoming program.

Prof Paolo Bouquet then presented the Horizon 2020 program, explaining its various pillars and funding components. The presentation also discussed the main changes relative to the previous research funding program FP7, regarding research topics, administrative, and financial issues. Prof Bouquet concluded his presentation by explaining the shape and domains of the potential Palestinian participation in Horizon 2020, as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

The last session was dedicated to highlight the skills of writing a competitive project proposal, presented by Mr Ruben Riestra. Mr Riestra first discussed the competitive landscape of the EU funded projects, and the different factors that contribute to the success of the proposal and how to ameliorate them towards Horizon 2020. Mr Riestra also provided some explanations on the characteristics of a good proposal, and how to  better position your proposal to attain better evaluations.

Dr Mustafa Jarrar concluded the workshop by summarizing some of the key points discussed throughout the workshop, in addition to shedding the light on Sina’s experience regarding some of the discussed points. The workshop has been attended by many interested staff members from Birzeit University, along with many participants from the local Palestinian institutes and universities, which allowed for vibrant discussions and remarks throughout the workshop. Another meeting was held later with Birzeit University’s administration to discuss the university’s strategy for EU funded research projects, in addition to discussing related administrational and financial issues.

Prof Bouquet and Mr Riestra finally concluded their trip on Thursday with a hands-on session with Sina Institute’s staff, to discuss SIna Institute’s strategy for Horizon 2020, among other relevant topics. 

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	جامعة بيرزيت تنظم النّدوة السّنويّة الثالثة للسانيّات الحاسوبيّة والمحتوى العربي في فلسطين	Facebook	Archive

Dr. Katrin Nyman-Metcalf, the  chair of Law and Technology Department at the Law Faculty in Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, and the consultant at the Estonian e-Governance Academy, visited Sina Institute and Faculty of Law at Birzeit University  to discuss joint cooperation opportunities.

Dr. Metcalf first met Dr. Khalil Hindi the president of Birzeit University, Dr. Asem Khalil the dean of Law and Public Administration faculty, and Dr. Mustafa Jarrar the director of Sina Institute for Knowledge Management and Arabic Technologies. Two other meetings were then scheduled with members at the Faculty of Law and Faculty of IT to discuss possible joint research and capacity building projects with Birzeit University. In addition to discussing several topics of interest in the field of IT laws frameworks, including the issues of privacy, human factor in data protection, cyber security, digital transactions, and legal and ethical courses, among other topics. Dr Metcalf also reflected on the Estonian e-government experience, and discussed several matching points between the Estonian and the Palestinian e-governance experiences.

It is worth mentioning that Sina Institute was the coordinator of several projects aiming to build the Palestinian e-government services. Such projects include Zinnar, building the Palestinian e-government interoperability framework, and the Palestinian e-Government Academy, providing capacity building and training services in the domain of e-government.

A master thesis “On Constructing the top levels of the Arabic Ontology” was defended in Thursday (13/2/2014) by Ms. Rana Rishmawi, which was under the supervision of Dr. Mustafa Jarrar, and committee members Dr. Bassem Sayrafi, Dr. Mahdi Arar, and Dr. Mudar Qassis.

The Arabic Ontology is a classification of the concepts of the Arabic terms, which is a necessary semantic resource for modern IT applications. This thesis contributes to constructing the top levels of the Arabic Ontology. The top-level concepts represent the most abstract concepts of the Arabic terms and linking them with well-formed semantic relations.
The presentation first gave an overview about the Arabic Ontology, which is an ongoing project in Sina Institute, at Birzeit University. And discussed the importance of building the top levels of the Arabic Ontology which is represented in governing the quality of the lower levels, as well as helping in the building process of the lower levels. It also presented the methodology used for constructing these top levels, and the classification methods that were used in order to classify the chosen most abstract concepts of the Arabic Language. The methodology included studying existing other upper-level ontologies, especially DOLCE, BFO and SUMO, as well as literature of Arab Philosophers.
The complexity of deciding the top-level concepts, is that these concepts are more abstract, and thus more application independent, and require deep investigation in order to be agreed upon. Such investigations need philosophical sense, rather than only linguistic and formal knowledge.

For more information about the Arabic Ontology please visit: http://localhost/sina/ArabicOntology/

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	Sina Institute

Sina Institute, in cooperation with its SIERA partners (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) and University of Milano-Bicocca (UniMiB)) have organized a discussion panel on Cross-Lingual Mapping Semantics at the 7th Global WordNet conference, in Tartu, Estonia in January 25th, 2014. A refereed article on this topic was also authored and presented at the conference, in addition to several other internal project meetings.

The discussion panel “Cross-Lingual Mapping Semantics” moderated by Prof. Mustafa Jarrar, Sina Institute’s director, discussed the challenges in research as well as in industry that are typically faced when constructing and  linking Wordnets across different  languages, thereby enabling multilingual web interoperability. The panel started with three real-life cases, each discussed a different experience in Wordnets mapping across different languages. Sonja Bosch, from University of South Africa, introduced the challenges in building the African Wordnet. The challenges in mapping between Asian languages were presented by Hitoshi Isahara, Toyohashi University of Technology. Additionally, the challenges in linking Indian language Wordnets were presented by Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

In the second part of the discussion panel, the panelists presented their experiences and suggestions  in linking Wordnets across different languages. Francis Bond, Nanyang Technological University, argued that there cannot be an exact conceptually equivalent concepts across different languages.  John P. McCrae, University of Bielefeld, claimed that linking Wordnets across different languages depends on the intended application. German Rigau, University of the Basque Country, discussed  the uncertainty in mapping among concepts across different  languages.  Piek Vossen, VU University Amsterdam, emphasized the trends in using the Inter-Lingual Index according to his experience in Eurowordnet. Christiane Fellbaum, Princeton University, highlighted on the use of the common concepts across the different languages.

A refereed article (co-authored by SIERA partners Mamoun Abu Helou, Matteo Palmonari, Mustafa Jarrar, and Christiane Fellbaum) titled: Towards Building Linguistic Ontology via Cross-Language Matching was also presented at the conference. The article introduced a methodology for mapping linguistic ontologies lexicalized across different languages, with a classification-based semantics for mappings. The article also  discussed the experimental design for validating the proposed approach, and discussed its role in creating a reference alignment that can be used in assessing cross-language matching systems.

Several bilateral meetings were conducted between SIERA partners; Sina Institute (Mustafa Jarrar, Mamon Abu Helou, and Mohammad Zeinaldeen) and BBWA (Amanda Hicks and Christiane Fellbaum), to discuss the mapping of Arabic ontology to Koyoto, and the mapping between the Arabic ontology and Wordnet. The partners planned and agreed on some future steps. Moreover, Sina Institute, BBAW, and VU discussed possible future cooperation  and potential project ideas for H2020.

The director of language services and Arabic localization at Google, Dr. Fayeq Owies, visited Birzeit University to give a lecture on the Arabic digital content, and discuss possible joint cooperation with Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies. The visit has been organized by Google ambassadors club at Birzeit University, in collaboration with Najjad Zeenni Center.

Dr. Owies’s Lecture, entitled: “BelArabi Ahla”, is part of the activities of the “Arabic Internet Days” campaign, intended to strengthen the cooperation between Google and the Media department at the United Nations; aiming to promote the Arabic content on the Internet. Dr. Owies focused on the importance of enriching the Arabic digital content, to bridge the wide gap between the number of Arabic speakers worldwide in contrast to the percentage of the Arabic content online at 3% only. Dr. Owies also pointed out Google’s activities to enrich the Arabic digital content, by building partnerships with universities to establish Arabic content, and civil and governmental institutions to digitize the content, in addition to translating the existing content into Arabic. Moreover, Dr. Owies illustrated that Google provides training, support and programs for all these institutions and telecommunication companies to create and manage Arabic Content; which helps to keep up with the innovation on the Arabic technologies level. The importance of such activities stems out of the fact that the Arabic language occupies the seventh position among the most widely used and fastest spreading languages on the Internet.

In his visit to Sina Institute, Dr. Owies met Dr. Henry Giacaman the vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Ali Jaber the dean of the Information Technology faculty, Dr. Basem Sirefi the director of the Computer Science department and the Masters in Computing programs, and Dr. Mustafa Jarrar the director of Sina Institute. The visit was scheduled in order to discuss the possible ways of joint cooperation between Google and Sina Institute at Birzeit University, including the memorizing/preserving of the Palestinian heritage, extraction and annotation of named entities in Arabic texts, and the involvement of the university students in the imaging and labeling processes of Google Street maps, among other technical and cultural subjects.

Dr. Fayeq Oweis is a Palestinian from the town of Der Debwan, north of Ramallah. He is the director of the languages services and Arabic localization department at Google, where he works to support and develop the Arabic versions of Google’s products, including Gmail, YouTube, and the social network Google+, as the Arabic version of Google+ was issued as the same time with the English version. Before joining Google, Dr. Owies worked as a consultant in the Arabic localization field for many of the Internet companies at the Silicon valley in California. Dr. Oweis holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies, and he worked as a teacher of the Arabic language and culture at the University of Santa Clara in California.

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Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies at Birzeit University has recently won an EU-FP7 funded project, called MOSAIC, which aims to find areas of cooperation between the ICT industries in the Mediterranean and European countries, and prepare them to participate in EU funding programs, such as Horizon 2020.

The grant is being signed (contract negotiation phase) and the project is expected to start in 2014 January 1st.  It consists of thirteen partners from European and Arab countries and will span for two years. It proposes to create Technology Platforms (TPs) in two regions of the Mediterranean: MED-TP1 covering Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya) and MED-TP2 covering Mashriq countries (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt). For each platform, there will be 3 Working Groups focusing on Horizon 2020 domains: ICT and ICT applications to Food and Energy challenges. MOSAIC plans the dialogue between MED-TPs and existing European Technology Platforms (ETPs) for those topics, to:

(1) analyze potential areas of cooperation between Europe and MED countries around these thematic areas.

(2) Identify key stakeholders to launch and run technology platforms in MED countries including representatives from industrial (large companies and SMEs) and academic sectors.

(3) Promote and support the creation of technology platforms in MED countries, including the production of both organizational documents (governance, structure, etc.) and technical documents (Vision, Strategic Research Agenda), as tools to set up sustainable scientific cooperation with Europe.

(4) Create a Global Strategy for EU-MED cooperation in the field of ICT and ICT applications for food and energy.

(5) Liaise of technology platforms with European counterparts, and contribute to update the European International Cooperation strategy.

(6) Increase awareness on the potentialities for cooperation between Europe and MED countries in the fields of ICT and ICT applications for food and energy.

Dr Mustafa Jarrar, the director of Sina Institute, highlighted that MOSAIC is the first project in the institute that explicitly aims to engage the Palestinian ICT industry with academia; not only for creating new business opportunities and network with EU companies, but also for preparing the ICT industry to participate in EU programs specially Horizon 2020, which is an important opportunity that they have been missing since many years. He highlighted that any small or large company in Palestine have the full right to participate and benefit from such programs as universities do.

Dr. Ali Jaber, the dean of the IT faculty, added that it’s the faculty mission to support and build a concert partnership industry, hoping that this project will be another addition to our Palestinian ICT industry. The faculty and it’s research arm, Sina Institute, will continue serving the Palestinian society by attracting international projects that provide the best opportunities for students as well as private and public sectors.

It is worth mentioning that although Sina Institute is newly established, it is the largest research center in ICT in Palestine and among a few centers in the region specialized in Arabic and knowledge management technologies. The institute has been awarded a grant from Google Int. for its research excellence in Arabic search engines and tools. It is also the coordinator and grant holder of several projects, such as the EU-FP7 SIERA project (for developing multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies), The Arabic Ontology project (for building an ontology for the Arabic Language), The EU-TEMPUS PalGov project (for capacity building in e-governance and establishing the Palestinian e-Government Academy), among several other projects.

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Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies at Birzeit University was invited for a workshop in Amman (15-16/9/2103) to find synergies between Sina’s SIERA and Arabic Ontology projects and GIZ’s Arabterm project that is hosted at the Bureau of Coordination of Arabization in Rebate (ALECSO-Arab League) and the German-Jordanian University.

In the first day, the workshop was opened by Dr Gudrun Schmidt (from GJU, who is the organizer of this workshop). Dr. Guido Zebisch, the director of Arabterm at GIZ, then presented the project achievements so far and revealed the future plans of project. Mr. Driss Kasimi, the technical director of the Bureau of Coordination of Arabization  (ALECSO-Arab League) then presented and highlighted the methodologies used in Arabization of the new and foreign terms.Dr. Mustafa Jarrar, the director of Sina Institute, presented a brief summary of the ongoing projects at the institute, mainly SIERA and Arabic Ontology, and proposed some ideas and methodologies about converting the Arabterm to an ontology – in order for the Arabicterm to be used in modern computer applications as well as control the quality of the term definitions. Dr. Caterina Caracciolo, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) gave a presentation about her team’s efforts in developing (Vocbench), a multilingual web program for editing and managing glossaries in the content of the Semantic Web.

The second day of the workshop focused on agreeing on the possible cooperation between the mentioned parties especially the usage on the linguistic sources, methodologies and tools available at Sina Institute by the workers developing the Arabterm Technical Dictionary.

The workshop was attended by: Mustafa Jarrar, Mohammad ZeinEddin, and Hiba Olwan (Sina Institute); Guido Zebisch (GIZ); Iman Al Naser and Driss Kasimi (BCA); Dr. Caterina Caraggiolo (FAO); Gudrun Schmidt, Nicole Zarzar, Ibrahim Khair, Hanan Shukair, and Zain Abu Taleb (GJU).

It is worth mentioning also that a bilateral meeting was conducted between the director Sina Institute at Birzeit Univerity (Dr Mustafa Jarrar) with the Vice President (Dr Anton Mangstl) and the Knowledge Management Advisor (Dr Gudrun Schmidt) of the German-Jordanian University, to discuss the possible cooperation between both universities.

A team from Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies at Birzeit University has participated in the final conference of the EU-FP7 funded project PERA (Palestine for European Research Area), which was organized by Palestine Technical University- Kadoorie in Tulkarm, in 22/9/2013.

Dr Mustafa Jarrar, the director of Sina Institute​, presented the past and current EU projects of the institute, and focused on ​the goals and achievements of the SIERA project, which is​ the current project​ funded by the European Union (FP7)​. Dr Jarrar ​has also over-viewed the institute’s forthcoming projects ​and partnerships in EU programs.

The conference was attended by a group of researchers and specialists from various local and international universities and research centers, ministries and local institutions, in addition to a group of representatives of the partners in the PERA project from the Polytechnic University of Tarino, the CTM Research Center in Spain, and EFB organization in the USA. The FP7 Project Officer Tanya Dimitrov has also attended and explained how to ease and facilitate the participation process of the Palestinian Society in future European Research. She further provided a detailed presentation on the upcoming European Program Horizon 2020, which will commence at the beginning of the year 2014.