The company, product and event (CoProE) ontology is an ontology that is being developed for use as a component of DAVID, a text mining system for business intelligence. The main design principle of the ontology, as well as the whole text miming system, is based on heavy reuse of existing freely available resources. This paper introduces the ontology and the domain knowledge component that utilizes it. In addition to describing the ontology and its design principles, we consider the ways in which the design process of the domain knowledge model and the CoProE ontology facilitated the design of our whole business intelligence text mining system.
Knowledge economy is more and more collaborative and de-centralized, where knowledge is defined, used and shared across different groups and domains. Sharing this knowledge allows users to create knowledge-based commmunities but introduces security risks to organizations when confidential data is disclosed to competitors. This paper describes a semantic framework to define knowledge-based communities where users can share knowledge across organizations posing and enforcing access and privacy policies. In addition it also provides a graphical tool to represent and visualize those communities facilitating the understanding of their relations and the content within them. In addition, it presents the evaluation carried out by a group of triallists from two commercial departments.
This article aims at providing better understanding of the applicability of Semantic Web tools and technologies in practice. It introduces a case study of the use of semantic technologies for extraction, integration and meaningful search and retrieval of expertise data, as an example of the new approaches to data integration and information management. In particular, the paper discusses the process of building expert profiles in a form of ontology database by integrating competences from structured and unstructured sources. The results of the case study show that emerging Semantic Web technologies such as the OWL 2, SPARQL, SPIN rule language, and public vocabularies such as FOAF, DOAC, bibTeX, Dublin Core and other can be used for building individual and enterprise competence models. The proposed approach extends the functionalities of existing enterprise information systems and offers possibilities for development of future Internet services. This allows organizations to express their core competences and talents in a standardized, machine processable and understandable format, and hence facilitates their integration in the European Research Area and beyond.
One of the principles of managing structured knowledge of an application domain is to exploit the notion of an ontology. Generalization of knowledge entities using formal semantic metadata enables classi cation and structuring of knowledge for better metadata management. Classi cation serves to form conceptual hierarchy of ontologies to reflect relationships among entities in the domain semantically while structuring helps to position vertical domain generalizations in appropriate relation-ships horizontally. We present a novel approach for conceptualization of enterprise application information in such a hierarchy to structure knowledge in abstract and domain speci c ontologies in RDFS forming reusable knowledge bases. We overcome conceptualization complexities in ligree enterprise information models by focusing on essential aspects of data types and their semantics to align relationship for business objects, enterprise data types and semantic entities with pragmatic consideration on a lightweigt semantic information model to maximize flexibility and inferential efficiency service query answering as well as reuse of structured knowledge artifacts.
A graph is the most common method of visualizing a semantic web. However, when dealing with large and complex semantic webs, existing systems face challenges such as slow loading times and too much information being displayed on the screen. This paper introduces a Multimodal Semantic Browser (MMSB) that allows users to visualize and navigate through semantic webs with millions of triples. In addition, the Browser also recognizes the type of content that the user has selected and chooses the best modality and application to display that content in addition to a graph display.
More than ever, the Web is a space of social interaction. Recent trends reveal that Internet users spend more time interacting within online communities than in checking and replying to e-mail. Online communities and institutions create new spaces for interaction, but also open new avenues for the emergence of grievances, claims, and disputes. Consequently, online dispute resolution (ODR) procedures are core to these new online worlds. But can ODR mechanisms provide sufficient levels of reputation, trust, and enforceability for it to become mainstream? This contribution introduces the new approaches to ODR with an emphasis on the Ontomedia Project, which is currently developing a web-based platform to facilitate online mediation in different domains
Spatial Hypertext Wiki (ShyWiki) is a wiki which represents knowledge using notes that are spatially distributed in wiki pages and have some visual characteristics such as colour, size, or font type. Spatial and visual characteristics are important in a wiki to improve human comprehension, creation and organization of knowledge. Another important capability in wikis is to allow machines to process knowledge. Wikis that formally structure knowledge for this purpose are called semantic wikis. This paper describes the semantic wiki capabilities of ShyWiki. ShyWiki can represent knowledge at different levels of formality. Users of ShyWiki can annotate the content and represent semantic relations without being experts of semantic web data description languages. The spatial hypertext features make it suitable for users to represent unstructured knowledge and implicit graphic relations among concepts. In addition, semantic web and spatial hypertext features are combined to represent structured knowledge. The semantic web features of ShyWiki improve navigation and publish the wiki knowledge as RDF resources, including the implicit relations that are analyzed using a spatial parser.
Students and workers mobility in the European scenario represents today a big challenge. During the last years, several initiatives have been carried out to deal with the above picture, being the European Quali cation Framework (EQF), a common architecture for describing quali cations, one of the most signi cant. In parallel, several research activities were established with the aim of exploiting semantic technologies for quali cation comparison in the context of human resources acquisition. In this paper, the EQF speci cations are applied in a practical scenario to develop a ranking algorithm allowing for quali cation comparison on the basis of knowledge, skill and competence concepts, potentially aimed at supporting European employers during the recruitment phases.
A mining method for egocentric and polycentric queries in multi-dimensional networks is proposed. The method allows fast search for objects in sufficient proximity of other object(s) where the proximity is defined in terms of multiple relationships between objects. The method uses spreading activation technique. Other potential uses of spreading activation technique are also outlined and, in particular, include applications to collaborative filtering (community detection based on tag recommendations, expertise location, etc). Moreover, the spreading activation technique is combined with so-called ambient navigation. The advantages of such approach are high performance and high scalability in terms of size of multidimensional network. The proposed method is very practical and is implemented in IBM LanguageWare software products.
A user-centric architecture of infotainment content adaptation to the context is presented. The architecture uses component technologies in term of business logic and functionalities offered by social web (OpenID, FOAF) and semantic descriptions of MPEG-7 and MPEG-21. Technological alternatives are discussed and adapted to the specificity of vehicle applications in terms of scalability and platform mobility. The requirements of the architecture are motivated by the presentation of a scenario.
Web 2.0 platforms such as media sharing and social network sites (SNS) concern people in everyday life to a great extent. People are enabled to reach out to various media and up to now, it is nearly impossible to use digital identities ex ante or to recreate users’ identities ex post across different platforms. In this paper, we explore important methodologies in Web 2.0 such as cross-media analysis and social pattern based analysis based on a survey in this area, aiming at cross-platform information diffusion across social network sites. Open issues are discussed to explore the challenges and solutions in this new research area.
This paper describes the VAMP web application for the validation of MPEG-7 descriptions with respect to semantic constraints defined in a profile. The semantic constraints are formalised using an ontology and a set of rules.
This paper introduces a new model of personalized usage of the internet that is based on technologies of user representation, artificial intelligence and semantic augmentation of the content. By taking advantage of internet’s unprecedented dynamics, compared to traditional media, this user representation model incorporates cognitive, mainly, psychology theories, combined with parameters that constitute more traditional approaches in user profiling (such as demographics, expertise, etc). The purpose of this research is to alleviate difficulties that massive approaches impose on areas such as education and information processing, by integrating intelligent adaptive characteristics into web applications; this can lead to a highly adapted to each user’s needs content and more effective, in our case, learning.
Although ontologies promise an effective technology for information integration, it is often the case that two or more information providers do not share the same ontology. Several (semi)-automated ontology mapping methods have been developed towards solving this problem. This paper presents AUTOMS-F, a framework implemented as a Java API, which aims to facilitate the rapid development of tools for automatic mapping of ontologies by synthesizing several individual ontology mapping methods. Towards this goal, AUTOMS-F provides a highly extensible and customizable application programming interface. AUTOMS is a case study ontology mapping tool that has been implemented using the AUTOMS-F framework, and has been successfully evaluated in the international OAEI 2006 contest.
The ancient Chinese kind of thinking, as best known from TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) is very different from the modern western approach of scientific medicine. But there is powerful knowledge in both systems and the knowledge is complementary. It is obvious that our methods and techniques of knowledge management do not support the foreign kind of thinking. Though many of our trends have striking similarity to this ancient Chinese behaviour. Holistic approaches, synthesis versus analysis, networking, social web, empathy, mirror neurons, memetics, graphical versus textual communication. Many of the things we cannot understand are complex systems and for these systems our analytic behaviour in thinking does not seem to work. The straight rule of cause and effect does not work for complex systems, so our western philosophy based on causality fails. Our attempt in managing knowledge using analytical models based on causality will probably fail too. To break up information into sentences of words and looking for grammar (taxonomy), syntax and relations (ontology) cannot work. Because it is the wrong way of asking questions compared to the ancient Chinese philosophy. So what could be a useful approach in managing complex systems like knowledge in organisations from the ancient Chinese point of view?
Requirements Engineering is recognized as a crucial part of project and software development processes. This is due to the fact that the different stakeholders involved in a development project have to establish common terminologies as well as goals, scenarios and requirements expressed using these terminologies. Within the Semantic Web initiative various standards emerged for the creation and use of terminologies, expressed in the shape of semantic networks, taxonomies and ontologies. We develop an approach for semantic based Requirements Engineering. We present an ontology for capturing requirements relevant information. Furthermore, we report about a tool for semantic based Requirements Engineering and its application in a real-world development project scenario from the E-Government domain.
In many respects Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management (KM) are strongly related to each other. From a KM perspective the Web 2.0 evolution can serve as a pool of ideas for new ways of knowledge sharing, knowledge organisation and for the development of new architectures of measurable knowledge management systems. KM projects are usually developed in a process-oriented, goal-driven environment, embedded in complex organisational structures, whereas typical Web 2.0 applications like del.icio.us, flickr or friendster are building “their own context”. This paper will examine Tim O´Reilly’s eight generic Web 2.0 design patterns in terms of their applicability for a measurable KM System in an Enterprise 2.0. Two use cases will be presented and it will be discussed which of the design patterns could be enriched by technologies from the semantic web which will be summarized as a concept named “Enterprise n+1”.
As the annotation of media resources becomes increasingly viable with intuitive tools and semi-automatic extraction of information, the need for a common annotation vocabulary becomes ever stronger. Such a vocabulary needs to be able to provide enough information to a computer system to allow for media retrieval, adaptation and presentation. On the other hand, complexity will inhibit uptake on the Semantic Web, where simplicity seems to be the key to success. I present my research in building an automated multimedia presentation system and from this experience I outline a vocabulary which covers the needs of retrieval, adaptation and presentation of media by intelligent systems.
This article deals with a special type of ePortfolio, the Learning and Personal Development Planning Portfolio (PDP). It explores the technical challenges deriving from pedagogical requirements of PDP processes and discusses how semantic web technologies can contribute to an integrated “ePortfolio-PDP System”.
Information Realisation is the process of presenting data as Textual, Graphical or Audial information to a human user. In this paper, we discuss the importance of this concept with respect to the accessibility of Semantic Web data to a diverse target audience. We provide an ontological point of view, defining the expressive characteristics and application domain of representation formats, thus presenting a system which produces representations customised to the user environment and the nature of the source data. Our approach considers the semantics of the data, not just the structure, and aims to present the information in the most semantically appropriate manner for the given target environment. We provide examples of a simple data set being realised as popular target representation formats: textual (XHTML, RSS); graphical (SVG, X3D); and audial (SoundML, VoiceXML).
On the one hand models can be used as navigational tools respecting mental processing capabilities of persons. On the other hand models can be analyzed automatically by information systems to deduce relevant content for knowledge management IT-components as E-Learning-Applications, KM-Portals, document management systems, etc. Therefore models of knowledge intensive business processes are a natural integration layer for persons and information systems providing the relevant context to interpret and handle information the right way. It has only to be solved how to interface these models efficiently from a person as well as from an information system point of view.
Today, most computer users work with traditional hierarchical file systems for organizing large amounts of personal files. Recently, tagging has grown popular as
an alternative means of organizing information resources. We argue that tagging is a powerful paradigm for efficient information access which overcomes many deficiencies of hierarchical file systems, especially in the context of the organization of large quantities of personal files. In this paper we present TagFS, a filesystem with tagging support which aims at a seamless integration of the tagging paradigm with local applications. While retaining the notions of directories and files and providing all standard filesystem operations, the semantics of these primitives are changed to modifications of the tag annotations.
This paper describes practical lessons learned in the project Knowledge Nets which examines the technological feasibility of the upcoming Semantic Web and the business implications of using these technologies in specific market sectors. In developing a Human Resource ontology to inject semantics-awareness to current job portals, we investigated the potential of reusing the huge amount of domain knowledge already available in ontology-like form in the eRecruitment domain as an input for the domain conceptualization. According to our experiences we confirm previous findings in the knowledge acquisition literature and in recent surveys of the state of the art in the ontology engineering area: 1) building ontology-based applications is still a tedious process mainly due to the lack of mature tools and methods which can handle the requirements of real-world applications; and 2) using existing ontologies in new application contexts is currently related to considerable efforts which should not be neglected by the engineering team. We use the insights gained during this project to derive a set of guidelines for developing Semantic Web applications in similar domains.
We explored how the intended purpose of a knowledge model can influence the modelling process and in particular, how it impacts on the choice points of the underlying modelling methodology. We introduce a classification of knowledge models according to their intended scope, expressiveness and degree of acceptance. As a result, we aim to define critical success factors of methodologies for ontologies that are built by domain experts and that can be used as a basis for knowledge enabled (software) systems
Ontology development is a time-consuming and error-prone process; the need for an embedded mechanism that evaluates quality and acceptance of the resultant collaborative ontology is apparent. Existing tools and methodologies lack consensus building mechanisms that must be employed in order for a team to agree on a collaborative ontology. In this paper we describe a collaborative methodology for ontology development that supports a team to reach consensus through iterative evaluations and improvements. In every cycle of the iterative process, the structure of the collaborative ontology is revised and evolved. The process terminates when the participants have no more critiques and objections.
The development of new ontologies does not tap the full potential of existing knowledge sources and ongoing ontology engineering methodologies do not address ontology reuse to a satisfactory extent yet. In this paper we analyze the challenges related to the reuse process on the basis of two scenarios in the domains of eRecruitment and medicine, which aim at building domain ontologies by reusing existing knowledge sources.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a decentralized networking paradigm where autonomous parties have equivalent capabilities in providing other parties with data and/or services. On the other hand, Knowledge Management (KM) is viewed as a core capacity in order to compete in the modern social and economic environment. In the view of the emerging semantic web technologies, P2P is looking for knowledge-driven domains to better exploit its technological potential. At the same time, driven by economical and social trends, KM is questioning its centralized nature assumption and is looking for a technological paradigm in order to benefit from exploiting its distributed dimension. In this paper we discuss the state of the art and trends in both the P2P and KM fields, discuss what possible synergies can benefit integrated P2P KM solutions, and present an implemented P2P KM system.
Knowledge Management software is software that integrates. Existing Data sources, process flows, application features from office appliances have to be brought together. There are different standards, consisting of data formats and communication protocols, that address this issue. The WWW and Semantic Web are designed to work on a worldwide scale and define those standards. We transfer the web standards to the desktop szenario, a vision we call Semantic Desktop – a Semantic Web enhanced desktop environment. Central is the idea of taking know-how from the SemanticWeb to tackle personal information management. Existing desktop applications (email client, browser, office applications) are integrated, the semantic glue between them expressed using ontologies. We also present the www.gnowsis.org open source project by the DFKI that realizes parts of this vision. It is based on a Semantic Web Server running as desktop service. It was used in experiments and research projects and allows others to experiment. Knowledge management applications can be built on top of it, reducing the implementation cost.
We present an architectural design which provides several services in an integrated environment, such as: query/inference capabilities over both data and knowledge, dynamic annotation of web pages, maintaining consistence for repositories and annotated pages, crawling services and automatic matching between schemas. It is a very practical and feasible solution that improves design, maintenance of consistence, integration and development of applications within concrete domains in the Semantic Web.
In this paper we present an infrastructure for publishing and managing knowledge in the Semantic Web. The infrastructure is based on a resource directory, called Semantic Directory, which contains information about web resources. In our approach, the semantics introduced in the Semantic Directories allows users to make more expressive queries, namely semantic queries. In order to show the advantages of our architecture, a prototype for querying digital libraries is described. Information inferred from the ontology-explicit knowledge is used to make more complex queries, that is, queries that cannot be solved by traditional digital library systems.
This document describes our current work on developing a framework which supports organizations in the successful implementation of Knowledge Management (KM). It follows the holistic approach of a KM introduction by considering technological, organizational and human aspects, as well as the organizational culture in equal measure. The framework provides recommendations based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) techniques and Semantic Web technologies. It supports the four processes of Aamodt & Plaza’s CBR-cycle. The best practice cases for a successful KM implementation are structured by the use of an ontology.
This paper describes our current work in supporting the ad-hoc composition of teams, recruited from independent departments in an organisation, in order to solve a specific customer request. We propose the usage of a web-based decision support system using ontologies as a conceptual model for representing the organisation-specific competence portfolio. A case study shows the advantages of the proposed approach.
This paper presents an approach to supporting the exchange of knowledge in communities of practice that connect experts from different fields of expertise. The developed system allows unobtrusive construction of personalised knowledge maps that capture implicit knowledge of individuals and groups of users and make it usable for collaborative structuring of shared information repositories. The personalised maps also reflect the global patterns of knowledge exchange in the community which allows the extraction of a shared conceptual structure that connects knowledge across different individuals and groups of users. To this end techniques for self-organised clustering are combined with methods for supervised learning and collaborative filtering. Application scenarios include automatic generation of personalised knowledge portals, collaborative knowledge management and the construction of shared ontologies and topic networks. The real-world testbed is the Internet platfom netzspannung.org.