AKT EPrints Archive http://eprints.aktors.org/oai2.xml 2.0 hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk 0001-01-01 no YYYY-MM-DD oai_dc http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/

oai:aktors.org:8 2002-01-22

Large scale acquisition and maintenance from the web without source access Leonard, Thomas Glaser, Hugh AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge acquisition Although different web sites structure their pages differently, the pages within a single site are often generated from a database and have a regular layout from which it is possible to extract information automatically. Dome is a visual tool for manipulating tree-structured docu-ments. It can import and export in XML or HTML formats, making it ideal for harvesting information from web pages. Editing is performed using a direct manipulation interface and the operations are recorded for later playback. The knowledge extracted from a web page may be updated by replaying the recorded sequence when the source page changes. The same sequence can be applied to other pages with a similar format, and facilities are provided to batch process a large collection of pages in one operation. In this paper we describe how Dome may be used to extract knowledge from web sites in such a way that the extraction process may be reliably replayed. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/8/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/8/01/Leonard-Glaser.pdf

oai:aktors.org:10 2002-02-14

MyPlanet: an ontology-driven Web-based personalised news service Kalfoglou, Yannis Domingue, John Motta, Enrico Vargas-Vera, Maria Buckingham Shum, Simon AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge retrieval Knowledge publishing In this paper we present myPlanet, an ontology-driven personalised Web-based service. We extended the existing infrastructure of the PlanetOnto news publishing system. Our concerns were mainly to provide lightweight means for ontology maintenance and ease the access to repositories of news items, a rich resource for information sharing. We reason about the information being shared by providing an ontology-driven interest-profiling tool which enable users to specify their interests. We also developed ontology-driven heuristics to find news items related to users' interests. This paper argues for the role of ontology-driven personalised Web-based services in information sharing. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/10/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/10/02/ontoIS01final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:11 2002-02-14

Template-driven information extraction for populating ontologies Vargas-vera, Maria Domingue, John Kalfoglou, Yannis Motta, Enrico Buckingham Shum, Simon AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge acquisition Knowledge modelling We address the integration of information extraction(IE) and ontologies. In particular, using an ontology to aid the IE process, and using the IE results to help populate the ontology. We perform IE by means of domain specific templates and the lightweight use of Natural Language Processing(NLP) techniques. Our main goal is to learn information from texts by the use of templates and in this way to alleviate the main bottleneck in creating knowledge-base systems that is "the extraction of knowledge". Our domain of study is "KMi Planet", a Web-based news server for communication of stories between members in our institute. The main goals of our system are to classify an incoming story, obtain the relevant objects within the story, deduce the relationships between them, and to populate the ontology. Furthermore, we aim to do this with minimal help from the user. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/11/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/11/01/vargas01.pdf

oai:aktors.org:12 2002-02-14

Supporting ontology-driven document enrichment within communities of practice Domingue, John Motta, Enrico Buckingham Shum, Simon Vargas-vera, Maria Kalfoglou, Yannis AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Formative work by Lave and Wenger has articulated how practices emerge through the interplay of informal processes with symbolic codifications and artifacts. In this paper, we describe how ontologies can serve as symbolic tools within a community of practice supporting communication and knowledge sharing. We show that when a community's perspective on an issue is stable, it opens the possibility for introducing knowledge services, based on an ontology co-constructed by knowledge engineers with stakeholders. Using a case study we describe our approach, ontology-driven document enrichment, looking at how ontology construction and population can be supported by Web based technologies 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/12/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/12/01/kcap01_john_final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:13 2002-02-14

On the integration of technologies for capturing and navigating knowledge with ontology-driven services Kalfoglou, Yannis Domingue, John Carr, Leslie Motta, Enrico Vargas-Vera, Maria Buckingham Shum, Simon Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Nowadays, many distinct communities are researching for knowledge capturing, modelling, and navigation. Moreover, advances in Internet technology makes it possible to perform most of these task on heterogeneous and distributed environments such as the Web. These advances though, have raised the need for knowledge services to accommodate the ever increasing number of Web users. To provide such a service one needs to combine key technologies for different aspects of knowledge management: capturing, modelling, navigating. This should be tightly integrated with the intented service. We describe such an integration effort in this paper. Our domain is a Web-based news repository and we aimed to provide personalised ontology-driven services on the top of it. We used knowledge capturing technologies to populate the underlying ontologies, knowledge modelling techniques to provide reasoning capabilities for the ontology-driven service, and navigating technologies to overlay Web pages with the ontology driven service 2001-04-01 Departmental Technical Report http://eprints.aktors.org/13/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000013/01/kmi-tr-106.pdf

oai:aktors.org:14 2002-02-15

Identifying Communities of Practice: Analysing Ontologies as Networks to Support Community Recognition O'Hara, Dr Kieron Alani, Dr Harith Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Knowledge retrieval Communities of practice are seen as increasingly important for creating, sharing and applying organisational knowledge. Yet their informal nature makes them difficult to identify and manage. In this paper we set out ONTOCOPI, a system that applies network analysis techniques to an ontology to target the problem of identifying such communities. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/14/ msword http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000014/01/OHara-ontocopi-paper.doc

oai:aktors.org:17 2002-02-22

I-X and <I-N-CA>: an Architecture and Related Ontology for Mixed-initiative Synthesis Tasks Tate, Prof Austin Knowledge reuse Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Knowledge maintenance I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a plan, design or physical entity – i.e. it supports synthesis tasks. The I-X approach involves the use of shared models for task directed cooperation between human and computer agents who are jointly exploring (via some processes) a range of alternative options for the synthesis of an artifact such as a design or a plan (termed a product). The <I-N-CA> (Issues – Nodes – Critical and Auxiliary Constraints) ontology is used to represents a product as a set of constraints on the space of all possible products in the application domain. The modular I-X systems integration architecture encourages the creation of systems as components which handle “Issues” related to the design and its requirements, selects “Nodes” as the principal entities to be incorporated into the design, and checks or maintains a set of constraints of various types. 2001-09-01 Other http://eprints.aktors.org/17/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/17/02/2001-puk-ix-inca.pdf msword http://eprints.aktors.org/17/03/2001-puk-ix-inca.doc

oai:aktors.org:24 2002-02-22

A New Authoring Methodology for Large-Scale Hypermedia Applications Heath, Dr Ian Wills, Dr Gary Crowder, Dr Richard Hall, Prof Wendy Ballantyne, Mr Jim AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge modelling As the amount of information technology increases, managing information resources, so that the correct people can find the information easily, becomes a critical issue. Hypermedia systems are considered one solution to this problem as they provide a means for representing higher level relationships between the underlying information. However, the amount of information available electronically is increasing at an accelerated rate. Using standard hypermedia authoring techniques, the effort required managing and maintaining large-scale hypermedia systems is enormous. Hypermedia authoring in the large requires new methodologies if it is going to be feasible. This paper presents a new model for building and structuring large-scale hypermedia applications. It describes a case study that explored the delivery of hypermedia information in an industrial environment on a small scale. Models and techniques developed for that case study were then refined and augmented so they could support the construction of large-scale hypermedia systems. In order to support such endeavours a new linking model is presented that allows the author to explicitly represent abstract concepts contained within the underlying information and interconnect them in some meaningful manner. An example usage of this linking technique is then presented. 2000-11-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/24/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/24/01/newmethodology.pdf

oai:aktors.org:37 2002-02-15

ONTOCOPI: Methods and Tools for Identifying Communities of Practice Alani, Dr Harith O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Knowledge retrieval Knowledge modelling The paper describes ONTOCOPI, a tool for identifying communities of practice (COPs) by analysing ontologies of the relevant working domain. COP identification is currently a resource-heavy process largely based on interviews. ONTOCOPI attempts to uncover informal COP relations by spotting patterns in the formal relations represented in ontologies, traversing the ontology from instance to instance via selected relations. Experiments to determine particular COPs from an academic ontology are described, showing how the alteration of threshold settings, temporal settings, and the weights applied to the ontology’s relations affect the composition of the identified COP. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/37/ msword http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000037/01/Alani-IIP-paper.doc

oai:aktors.org:40 2002-02-21

notes of 13th Nov 2001 Walker, Michael AKT Working Paper The following is at its core a discussion and attempt to circumscribe the problem of knowledge management, and is followed by an attempt to understand how technology can be made to address this end. 2001-11-01 Other http://eprints.aktors.org/40/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000040/02/notes_of_Nov_13th_2001.pdf

oai:aktors.org:43 2002-02-20

Issues for an Ontology for Knowledge Valuation O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge maintenance This paper examines the application of inference-supporting ontologies to the issue of knowledge valuation. Knowledge, like customer goodwill or a brand, is an intangible asset for a firm; that is, a non-physical, non-financial claim to future wealth. Intangibles are notoriously difficult to value, but there are a number of reasons why we should try. A series of factors affecting the value of knowledge are discussed, and an ontology that could be used to express some of these is sketched. Such an ontology could be imported by e-business models, to help understand how an organisation’s knowledge adds value to its operations, and therefore to enable informed management of its knowledge assets. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/43/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/43/01/ohara-ijcai.pdf

oai:aktors.org:44 2002-02-22

Managing Knowledge Capture: Economic, Technological and Methodological Considerations O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Knowledge maintenance This paper examines the process of managing knowledge capture from within an organization, i.e. the process of making tacit knowledge explicit. Any knowledge management decision to capture tacit knowledge needs to be informed by the costs incurred and benefits produced. These costs and benefits vary radically depending on properties of the domain, the organization, the knowledge to be captured and the importance of excluding others from the benefits of the knowledge. The picture is further complicated by the difficulties involved in valuing knowledge. We survey these factors, and seek to integrate such considerations into standard knowledge management methodologies (using CommonKADS as an example), and into methodologies for the qualitative valuation of intangible assets. 2001-01-01 Departmental Technical Report http://eprints.aktors.org/44/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/44/01/valuation-methods.pdf

oai:aktors.org:45 2002-02-22

Dealing with Dependencies between Content Planning and Surface Realisation in a Pipeline Generation Architecture Bontcheva, Dr Kalina Wilks, Prof Yorick AKT Showcase Papers The majority of existing language generation systems have a pipeline architecture which offers efficient sequential execution of modules, but does not allow decisions about text content to be revised in later stages. However, as exemplified in this paper, in some cases choosing appropriate content can depend on text length and formatting, which in a pipeline architecture are determined after content planning is completed. Unlike pipelines, interleaved and revision-based architectures can deal with such dependencies but tend to be more expensive computationally. Since our system needs to generate acceptable hypertext explanations reliably and quickly, the pipeline architecture was modified instead to allow additional content to be requested in later stages of the generation process if necessary. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/45/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/45/01/updated-ijcai01.pdf

oai:aktors.org:47 2002-03-06

Knowledge Sharing and Inconsistency Checking on Multiple Enterprise Models Chen-Burger, Dr. Yun-Heh AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge modelling Knowledge maintenance The approach of Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling is now more commonly accepted and used in practice as a way to manage knowledge than ever before. However, the concept of applying multiple modelling languages to describe the same domain may still sound frightening to many. In addition to the cost, time and complexity involved, problems such as knowledge sharing between multiple models and achieving and maintaining integrity between them are also important. We argue that Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling is helpful and in some situations necessary. This paper gives examples of how formal methods, such as logical languages, can provide assistance in making such an approach more appealing and transparent. We suggest that the MPM approach is valuable in representing, understanding and analysing a complex domain, but that much automated support is needed. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/47/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/47/01/formal.pdf

oai:aktors.org:48 2002-03-06

Rapid Knowledge Construction: A Case Study in Corporate Contingency Planning Using Collaborative Hypermedia Selvin, A M Buckingham Shum, S J AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Many knowledge management (KM) efforts revolve around managing documents in a repository or enabling better real-time communication. An ideal approach would combine these with the ability to create knowledge content that can be either formal or informal in nature, in a rapid, real-time manner. We will call this Rapid Knowledge Construction (RKC). This paper describes the concepts underpinning our approach to RKC, and provides a case study of the approach in an industry context. The Compendium approach, which has been applied in projects in both industry and academic settings, facilitates the rapid creation of the content of a KM repository, by combining collaborative hypermedia, group facilitation techniques, and an analytical methodology rooted in knowledge acquisition and structured analysis. Compendium addresses key challenges for the successful introduction of KM technologies into work practice: (i) customization for different use contexts; (ii) integration of formal and informal communication; (iii) integration of both prescribed and ad hoc representations; (iv) validation and cross-referencing of the repository ‘on the fly’ at the point of entry; (v) conversion of organizational documents/emails into a hypertext database, and (vi) conversion of hypertext databases into organizational document formats. 2002-03-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/48/ coverimage http://eprints.aktors.org/48/02/kmi-tr-92-cover.jpg pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/48/03/kmi-tr-92.pdf

oai:aktors.org:51 2002-03-13

APECKS: Using and Evaluating a Tool for Ontology Construction with Internal and External KA Support Tennison, Dr Jeni O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Knowledge acquisition This paper describes APECKS, an experimental tool for collaborative ontology construction. APECKS takes a different line to most ontology servers, in that it is designed for use by domain experts, possibly in the absence of a knowledge engineer, and its aim is to foster and support debate about domain ontologies. To that end, it does not enforce ideals of consistency or correctness, and instead allows different conceptualisations of a domain to coexist. The system architecture and lifecycle are introduced, and three extensive scenarios are outlined, showing how APECKS supports ontology construction, learning, ontology comparison and discussion. APECKS has also been used by several subjects during an evaluation experiment, and the results of this experiment are described. A particular factor about APECKS is that, as well as providing internal KA support, it is designed to interface with web-accessible KA tools, thereby allowing theoretically unlimited KA support for users. The prototype used WebGrid-II as external KA support, and the issues involved in integrating APECKS and WebGrid are discussed in detail. 2002-01-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/51/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000051/01/ijhcs-tennisonetal.pdf

oai:aktors.org:57 2002-04-17

An Expressive Constraint Language for Semantic Web Applications Gray, Prof Peter Hui, Dr Kit Preece, Dr Alun Knowledge modelling We present a framework for semantic web applications based on constraint interchange and processing. At the core of the framework is a well-established semantic data model (P/FDM) with an associated expressive constraint language (Colan). To allow data instances to be transported across a network, we map our data model to the RDF Schema specification. To allow constraints to be transported, we define a Constraint Interchange Format (CIF) in the form of an RDF Schema for Colan, allowing each constraint to be defined as a resource in its own right. We show that, because Colan is essentially a syntactically-sugared form of first-order logic, and P/FDM is based on the widely-used extended ER model, our CIF is actually very widely applicable and reusable. Finally, we outline a set of services for constraint fusion and solving, which are particularly applicable to business-to-business e-commerce applications. All of these services can be accessed using the CIF. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/57/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000057/01/preece.pdf

oai:aktors.org:58 2002-04-12

Constraints as Mobile Specifications in E-Commerce Applications Hui, Dr Kit-ying Gray, Prof Peter M. D. Kemp, Dr Graham J. L. Preece, Dr Alun D. Knowledge reuse We show how quantified constraints expressed in a sub-language of first-order logic, against a shared data model that is free to evolve, provide an excellent way of transporting domain-specific semantics along with the data. In this form it can be processed automatically by various intelligent components, instead of requiring human intervention, as it would do if expressed in natural language. It can also be combined with other contraints, by algebraic transformation against common data model, and then passed to an appropriate solver. These techniques have been tested in a classic e-business application scenario: configuring a product from parts selected from e-vendors' catalogues, whilst conforming to requirements specific to the parts, expressed as mobile constraints. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/58/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000058/01/hui-ds9-2001.pdf

oai:aktors.org:60 2002-04-19

Capturing knowledge of user preferences: ontologies in recommender systems Middleton, Mr Stuart E De Roure, Prof David C Shadbolt, Prof Nigel R AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge retrieval Tools for filtering the World Wide Web exist, but they are hampered by the difficulty of capturing user preferences in such a dynamic environment. We explore the acquisition of user profiles by unobtrusive monitoring of browsing behaviour and application of supervised machine-learning techniques coupled with an ontological representation to extract user preferences. A multi-class approach to paper classification is used, allowing the paper topic taxonomy to be utilised during profile construction. The Quickstep recommender system is presented and two empirical studies evaluate it in a real work setting, measuring the effectiveness of using a hierarchical topic ontology compared with an extendable flat list. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/60/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/60/01/Capturing_knowledge_of_user_preferences%2C_ontologies_in_recommender_systems1.pdf

oai:aktors.org:64 2002-05-09

The Internet: A Tool for Democratic Pluralism? O'Hara, Dr Kieron Knowledge maintenance No abstract 2002-01-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/64/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000064/01/SaC-review.pdf

oai:aktors.org:68 2002-05-28

Artequakt: Generating Tailored Biographies with Automatically Annotated Fragments from the Web Kim, Miss Sanghee Alani, Dr Harith Hall, Prof Wendy Lewis, Dr Paul Millard, Dr David Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Weal, Dr Mark AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing The Artequakt project seeks to automatically generate narrative biographies of artists from knowledge that has been extracted from the Web and maintained in a knowledge base. An overview of the system architecture is presented here and the three key components of that architecture are explained in detail, namely knowledge extraction, information management and biography construction. Conclusions are drawn from the initial experiences of the project and future progress is detailed. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/68/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/68/01/Artequakt-camera-ready.pdf

oai:aktors.org:71 2002-05-28

Exploiting Synergy between Ontologies and Recommender Systems Middleton, Mr Stuart Alani, Dr Harith Shadbolt, Prof Nigel De Roure, Prof Dave AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge acquisition Knowledge maintenance Recommender systems learn about user preferences over time, automatically finding things of similar interest. This reduces the burden of creating explicit queries. Recommender systems do, however, suffer from cold-start problems where no initial information is available early on upon which to base recommendations. Semantic knowledge structures, such as ontologies, can provide valuable domain knowledge and user information. However, acquiring such knowledge and keeping it up to date is not a trivial task and user interests are particularly difficult to acquire and maintain. This paper investigates the synergy between a web-based research paper recommender system and an ontology containing information automatically extracted from departmental databases available on the web. The ontology is used to address the recommender systems cold-start problem. The recommender system addresses the ontology’s interest-acquisition problem. An empirical evaluation of this approach is conducted and the performance of the integrated systems measured. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/71/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/71/01/Quickstep-Ontocopi.pdf

oai:aktors.org:72 2002-05-29

Initiating Organizational Memories Using Ontology Network Analysis Kalfoglou, Dr Yannis Alani, Dr Harith O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge publishing Knowledge maintenance One of the important problems in organizational memories is their initial set-up. It is difficult to choose the right information to include in an organizational memory, and the right information is also a prerequisite for maximizing the uptake and relevance of the memory content. To tackle this problem, most developers adopt heavy-weight solutions and rely on a faithful continuous interaction with users to create and improve its content. In this paper, we explore the use of an automatic, light-weight solution, drawn from the underlying ingredients of an organizational memory: ontologies. We have developed an ontology-based network analysis method which we applied to tackle the problem of identifying communities of practice in an organization. We use ontology-based network analysis as a means to provide content automatically for the initial set-up of an organizational memory. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/72/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000072/01/kalfoglou_et_al_ecai_kmom02.pdf

oai:aktors.org:76 2002-06-29

Managing Reference: Ensuring Referential Integrity of Ontologies for the Semantic Web Alani, Dr Harith Dasmahapatra, Dr Srinandan Gibbins, Dr Nicholas Glaser, Hugh Harris, Steve Kalfoglou, Dr Yannis O'Hara, Dr Kieron Shadbolt, Prof Nigel Knowledge acquisition Knowledge maintenance The diversity and distributed nature of the resources available in the semantic web poses significant challenges when these are used to help automatically build an ontology. One persistent and pervasive problem is that of the resolution or elimination of coreference that arises when more than one identifier is used to refer to the same resource. Tackling this problem is crucial for the referential integrity, and subsequently the quality of results, of any ontology-based knowledge service. We have built a coreference management service to be used alongside the population and maintenance of an ontology. An ontology based knowledge service that identifies communities of practice (CoPs) is also used to maintain the heuristics used in the coreference management system. This approach is currently being applied in a large scale experiment harvesting resources from various UK computer science departments with the aim of building a large, generic web-accessible ontology. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/76/ ps http://eprints.aktors.org/76/01/ManagingReference-EKAW02.ps

oai:aktors.org:77 2003-02-18

Alice: Assisting Online Shoppers through Ontologies and Novel Interface Metaphors Domingue, Dr John Martins, Dr Maria Tan, Dr Jaicheng Stutt, Dr Arthur Pertusson, Mr Helgi AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge modelling In this paper we describe some results of the Alice project. Alice is an ontology based e-commerce project which aims to support online users in the task of shopping. Ontologies describing customers, products, typical shopping tasks and the external context form the basis for the Alice architecture. We also exploit two novel interface metaphors originally developed for navigating databases: the Guides metaphor and Dynamic Queries. The Guides metaphor was developed at Apple to reduce the cognitive load on learners navigating a large hypermedia database. Within Alice we use the Guides metaphor to allow online shoppers to classify themselves. We discuss the link between Alice Guides and Kozinet’s notion of e-tribes or Virtual Communities of Consumption. Our second interface metaphor Dynamic Queries (coupled with Starfield displays) allow users to very quickly find relevant items by displaying the results of queries, posed via specialised slider widgets, within 100 milliseconds. We have constructed a tool, Quiver, which constructs Dynamic Query interfaces on-the-fly as the result of queries to knowledge models stored on the Alice server. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/77/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/77/01/alice-ekaw-camera-ready-final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:78 2002-07-12

A Grammar-Driven Knowledge Acquisition Tool that incorporates Constraint Propagation White, Dr Simon Sleeman, Prof Derek Knowledge acquisition To acquire knowledge that is fit for a specific purpose, it is very desirable to have a structured, declarative expression of the knowledge that is needed. This paper introduces a stand-alone knowledge acquisition tool, called COCKATOO (Constraint-Capable Knowledge Acquisition Tool), which uses constraint technology to specify the knowledge it requires. The language in which these speci-fications are given is based on the meta-language notation of context-free grammars. However, we also took the op-portunity to build a tool that is both more flexible and pow-erful by augmenting context-free grammars with the ex-pressiveness of constraints. COCKATOO was imple-mented using the SCREAMER+ declarative constraints package. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/78/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/78/01/KCAP2001-final.PDF

oai:aktors.org:84 2002-09-06

Information Flow based ontology mapping Kalfoglou, Dr Yannis Schorlemmer, Dr Marco AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge reuse Knowledge modelling Knowledge maintenance As ontologies become ever more important for semantically-rich information exchange and a crucial element for supporting knowledge sharing in a large distributed environment, like the Web, the demand for sharing them increases accordingly. One way of achieving this ambitious goal is to provide mechanised ways for mapping and merging ontologies. This has been the focus of recent research in knowledge engineering. However, we observe a dearth of mapping methods that are based on a strong theoretical ground, are easy to replicate in different settings, and use semantically-rich mechanisms for performing ontology mapping. In this paper, we aim to fill in these gaps with a method we propose for Information-Flow-based ontology mapping. Our method draws on the proven theoretical ground of Information Flow and channel theory, and we provide a systematic and mechanised methodology for deploying it on a distributed environment to perform ontology mapping among a variety of different ontologies. We applied our method at a large-scale experiment of mapping five ontologies modelling Computer Science departments in five UK Universities. We elaborate on a theory for ontology mapping, analyse the mechanised steps of applying it, and assess its ontology mapping results. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/84/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/84/01/odbase02-final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:89 2003-01-14

Formal Support for Adaptive Workflow Systems in a Distributed Environment Chen-Burger, Dr. Yun-Heh Stader, Ms. Jussi Knowledge reuse Knowledge modelling To achieve more widespread application, Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) need to be developed to operate in dynamic environments where they are expected to ensure that users are supported in performing flexible and creative tasks while maintaining organisational norms. In order to cope with these demands, the systems must provide knowledge about the business process itself and the organisational context in that these processes operate. It, however, is not an easy task to provide the appropriate and sufficient knowledge at the right level of abstraction that supports a workflow system at all stages of operation in a dynamic environment and for different types of users. At the same time, Enterprise Modelling (EM) methods are well recognised for their value in describing complex domains in an organised but usually informal structure. In particular, business process modelling techniques provide rich conceptualisations that tend to describe the type of information required by the adaptive workflow systems. However, because of their lack of formal structure the use of Enterprise Models that have been developed is limited. We propose the use of a formal language within a three-layered framework. This language helps to turn the information contained in an informal Enterprise Model into the kind of formal model required by an adaptive Workflow System. In its current state of development, FBPML (Fundamental Business Process Modelling Language) covers business processes, organisational structure, agents and their capabilities as well as execution logic that gives direct instructions to a workflow engine. We assist modelling efforts of Enterprise Modellers by giving them a visual modelling language, underpinned by a formal representation, that is expressive and easy to use and that lets them specify the information required by a workflow engine. In this paper, we present our formal enterprise modelling language, FBPML. We show how adaptive workflow systems, like those developed at AIAI (e.g. the Task Based Process Manager, AKT Workflow and I-X system), can take advantage of Enterprise Models represented in FBPML to provide effective support to users in real business environments. 2003-01-01 Book Chapter http://eprints.aktors.org/89/ ps http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000089/01/chen-burger-2003.ps

oai:aktors.org:90 2003-02-07

GATE: A Framework and Graphical Development Environment for Robust NLP Tools and Applications Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition In this paper we present GATE, a framework and graphical development environment which enables users to develop and deploy language engineering components and resources in a robust fashion. The GATE architecture has enabled us not only to develop a number of successful applications for various language processing tasks (such as Information Extraction), but also to build and annotate corpora and carry out evaluations on the applications generated. The framework can be used to develop applications and resources in multiple languages, based on its thorough Unicode support. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/90/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/90/01/acl-main.pdf

oai:aktors.org:91 2003-02-07

Using Human Language Technology for Automatic Annotation and Indexing of Digital Library Content Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition In this paper we show how we used robust human language technology, such as our domain-independent and customisable named entity recogniser, for automatic content annotation and indexing in two digital library applications. Each of these applications posed a unique challenge: one required adapting the language processing components to the non-standard written conventions of 18th century English, while the other presented the challenge of processing material in multiple modalities. This reusable technology could also form the basis for the creation of computational tools for the study of cultural heritage languages, such as Ancient Greek and Latin. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/91/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/91/01/ecdl.pdf

oai:aktors.org:92 2003-02-07

Adapting A Robust Multi-Genre Named Entity System for Automatic Content Extraction Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Many current information extraction systems tend to be designed with particular applications and domains in mind. With the increasing need for robust language engineering tools which can handle a variety of language processing demands, we have used the GATE architecture to design MUSE - a system for named entity recognition and related tasks. In this paper, we address the issue of how this general-purpose system can be adapted for particular applications with minimal time and effort, and how the set of resources used can be adapted dynamically and automatically. We focus specifically on the challenges of the ACE (Automatic Content Extraction) entity detection and tracking task, and preliminary results show promising figures. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/92/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/92/01/aimsa.pdf

oai:aktors.org:93 2003-02-07

A Light-weight Approach to Coreference Resolution for Named Entities in Text Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition This paper presents a lightweight approach to pronoun resolution in the case when the antecedent is named entity. It falls under the category of the so-called "knowledge poor" approaches that do not rely extensively on linguistic and domain knowledge. We provide a practical implementation of this approach as a component of the General Architecture for Text Engineering (GATE). The results of the evaluation show that even such shallow and inexpensive approaches provide acceptable performance for resolving the pronoun anaphors of named entities in texts. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/93/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/93/01/DAARC2002.pdf

oai:aktors.org:94 2003-02-07

Developing Reusable and Robust Language Processing Components for Information Systems using GATE Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition In this paper we present GATE, an architecture and a graphical development environment which enables users to develop and deploy HLT applications in a robust fashion. GATE also provides reusable, extendable, and customisable language processing modules (e.g., part of speech tagger, named entity recognition grammars), which combined with the extensive document format support (e.g., XML, HTML), form a useful toolset for building HLT-augmented information systems. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/94/ ps http://eprints.aktors.org/94/01/nlis.ps

oai:aktors.org:96 2003-02-07

Hypertext in the Semantic Web Kampa, Dr Simon Miles-Board, Mr Timothy Carr, Dr Leslie Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing The Semantic Web extends the current state of the Web with well-defined meaning. We advocate the use of ontological hypertext as an application of the Semantic Web to provide a principled and structured approach to navigating the resources on the Web. This paper demonstrates how we have applied this concept to two real-world scenarios. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/96/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/96/01/sp.pdf

oai:aktors.org:97 2003-02-07

Linking with Meaning: Ontological Hypertext for Scholars Kampa, Dr Simon Miles-Board, Mr Timothy Carr, Dr Leslie Hall, Prof Wendy Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing The links in ontological hypermedia are defined according to the relationships between real-world objects. An ontology that models the significant objects in a scholar’s world can be used toward producing a consistently interlinked research literature. Currently the papers that are available online are mainly divided between subject- and publisher-specific archives, with little or no interoperability. This paper addresses the issue of ontological interlinking, presenting two experimental systems whose hypertext links embody ontologies based on the activities of researchers and scholars. 2001-03-01 Departmental Technical Report http://eprints.aktors.org/97/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000097/01/lwm.pdf

oai:aktors.org:98 2003-02-14

The Semantics of Semantic Annotation Bechhofer, Mr Sean Goble, Prof Carol Carr, Dr Leslie Kampa, Dr Simon Hall, Prof Wendy Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Semantic metadata will play a significant role in the provision of the Semantic Web. Agents will need metadata that describes the content of resources in order to perform operations, such as retrieval, over those resources. In addition, if rich semantic metadata is supplied, those agents can then employ reasoning over the metadata, enhancing their processing power. Key to this approach is the provision of annotations, both through automatic and human means. The semantics of these annotations, however, in terms of the mechanisms through which they are interpreted and presented to the user, are sometimes unclear. In this paper, we identify a number of candidate interpretations of annotation, and discuss the impact these interpretations may have on Semantic Web applications. 2002-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/98/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/98/01/annotation.pdf

oai:aktors.org:100 2003-02-14

Conceptual Linking: Ontology-based Open Hypermedia Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing This paper describes the attempts of the COHSE project to define and deploy a Conceptual Open Hypermedia Service. Consisting of -an ontological reasoning service which is used to represent a sophisticated conceptual model of document terms and their relationships; -a Web-based open hypermedia link service that can offer a range of different link-providing facilities in a scalable and non-intrusive fashion; and integrated to form a conceptual hypermedia system to enable documents to be linked via metadata describing their contents and hence to improve the consistency and breadth of linking of WWW documents at retrieval time (as readers browse the documents) and authoring time (as authors create the documents). 2001-01-01 Conference Proceedings http://eprints.aktors.org/100/ html http://eprints.aktors.org/100/01/ConceptualLinking.html

oai:aktors.org:105 2003-02-20

Automatic Ontology-Based Knowledge Extraction from Web Documents Alani, Harith Kim, Sanghee Millard, David Weal, Mark Hall, Wendy Lewis, Paul Shadbolt, Nigel Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing To bring the Semantic Web to life and provide advanced knowledge services, we need efficient ways to access and extract knowledge from Web documents. Although Web page annotations could facilitate such knowledge gathering, annotations are rare and will probably never be rich or detailed enough to cover all the knowledge these documents contain. Manual annotation is impractical and unscalable, and automatic annotation tools remain largely undeveloped. Specialized knowledge services therefore require tools that can search and extract specific knowledge directly from unstructured text on the Web, guided by an ontology that details what type of knowledge to harvest. An ontology uses concepts and relations to classify domain knowledge. Other researchers have used ontologies to support knowledge extraction,1,2 but few have explored their full potential in this domain. The Artequakt project links a knowledge-extraction tool with an ontology to achieve continuous knowledge support and guide information extraction.//au: rewrite okay?// The extraction tool searches online documents and extracts knowledge that matches the given classification structure. It provides this knowledge in a machine-readable format that will be automatically maintained in a knowledge base (KB). Users could further enhance knowledge extraction using a lexicon-based term expansion mechanism that provides extended ontology terminology. 2003-02-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/105/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/105/01/IEEE-Artequakt.pdf

oai:aktors.org:106 2003-02-20

Initiating Organizational Memories using Ontology-based Network Analysis as a Bootstrapping Tool Alani, Harith Kalfoglou, Yannis O'Hara, Kieron Shadbolt, Nigel Knowledge retrieval An important problem for many kinds of knowledge systems is their initial set-up. It is difficult to choose the right information to include in such systems, and the right information is also a prerequisite for maximizing the uptake and relevance. To tackle this problem, most developers adopt heavyweight solutions and rely on a faithful continuous interaction with users to create and improve content. In this paper, we explore the use of an automatic, lightweight ontology-based solution to the bootstrapping problem, in which domain-describing ontologies are analysed to uncover significant yet implicit relationships between instances. We illustrate the approach by using such an analysis to provide content automatically for the initial set-up of an organizational memory. 2002-01-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/106/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/106/01/ExpertUpdate-Soton-final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:116 2003-02-27

Melita: Active Document Enrichment using Adaptive Information Extraction from Text Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Dingli, Mr. Alexiei Petrelli, Dr. Daniela Knowledge acquisition The traditional process of document annotation for knowledge identification and extraction in the Semantic Web (SW) is complex and time consuming, as it requires human manual annotation. There is currently a strong interest in Text Mining technologies (and in particular in Human Language-based Technologies), for reducing the burden of text annotation e.g. for Knowledge Management [Maybury2001]. In this poster we present Melita, an annotation interface that uses Adaptive Information Extraction from texts (IE) for reducing the burden of text annotation. In Melita, adaptation starts with the definition of a scenario, including a tag set for annotation (possibly organized as an ontology) and a corpus of texts to be annotated. Annotations are inserted by first selecting a tag from the ontology and then identifying the text area to annotate with the mouse. Differently from similar annotation tools [Day1997, Cunningham2001], Melita actively supports corpus annotation using Amilcare, an adaptive Information Extraction (IE) tool based on the (LP)2 algorithm [Ciravegna2001]. 2002-01-01 Conference Poster http://eprints.aktors.org/116/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/116/01/iswc02.pdf

oai:aktors.org:118 2003-02-27

Adaptive Information Extraction from Text by Rule Induction and Generalisation Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Knowledge acquisition (LP)2 is a covering algorithm for adaptive Information Extraction from text (IE). It induces symbolic rules that insert SGML tags into texts by learning from examples found in a userdefined tagged corpus. Training is performed in two steps: initially a set of tagging rules is learned; then additional rules are induced to correct mistakes and imprecision in tagging. Induction is performed by bottom-up generalization of examples in the training corpus. Shallow knowledge about Natural Language Processing (NLP) is used in the generalization process. The algorithm has a considerable success story. From a scientific point of view, experiments report excellent results with respect to the current state of the art on two publicly available corpora. From an application point of view, a successful industrial IE tool has been based on (LP)2. Real world applications have been developed and licenses have been released to external companies for building other applications. This paper presents (LP)2, experimental results and applications, and discusses the role of shallow NLP in rule induction. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/118/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/118/01/IJCAI01.pdf

oai:aktors.org:120 2003-02-27

(LP)2, an Adaptive Algorithm for Information Extraction from Web-related Texts Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio First Doctoral Symposium (LP)2 is an algorithm for adaptive Information Extraction from Web-related text that induces symbolic rules by learning from a corpus tagged with SGML tags. Induction is performed by bottom-up generalisation of examples in a training corpus. Training is performed in two steps: initially a set of tagging rules is learned; then additional rules are induced to correct mistakes and imprecision in tagging. Shallow NLP is used to generalise rules beyond the flat word structure. Generalization allows a better coverage on unseen texts, as it limits data sparseness and overfitting in the training phase. In experiments on publicly available corpora the algorithm outperforms any other algorithm presented in literature and tested on the same corpora. Experiments also show a significant gain in using NLP in terms of (1) effectiveness (2) reduction of training time and (3) training corpus size. In this paper we present the machine learning algorithm for rule induction. In particular we focus on the NLP-based generalisation and the strategy for pruning both the search space and the final rule set. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/120/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/120/01/Atem01.pdf

oai:aktors.org:122 2003-02-27

User Involvement in Adaptive Information Extraction: Position Paper Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Petrelli, Dr. Daniella Knowledge acquisition In the last years, research on adaptive Information Extraction from text (IE) has largely focused on algorithms and systems adaptable to new Web-related applications/ scenarios by users with analyst’s knowledge, i.e. knowledge on the domain/scenario only, [Kushme rick 1997], [Califf 1998], [Muslea 1998], [Freitag 1999], [Soderland 1999], [Freitag 2000], [Ciravegna 2001]. Successful comme rcial products have been created and there is an increasing interest on IE in the Internet market. The more the focus is on the user, the more the need for user-specific tools arises. Most of the current approaches are based on an adaptation phase in which the user provides a set of texts with the relevant information highlighted or with associated filled templates. Tagging is just one part of the adaptation task, though, in building real world applications. Adaptation as a one-way process (from tagged examples to rules) is unlikely to provide optimized results for specific users, as different uses will require different types of results (e.g., high recall in some cases, high precision in others). There is the necessity, we believe, to fully support users during the whole adaptation process so to maximize effectiveness and appropriateness of the final application, and to minimize the burden of system adaptation. In this paper we discuss requirements for user involvement in application development in Amilcare, a system for adaptive IE. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/122/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/122/01/udie.pdf

oai:aktors.org:123 2003-02-27

User-System Cooperation in Document Annotation based on Information Extraction Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Dingli, Mr. Alexiei Petrelli, Dr. Daniella Wilks, Prof. Yorick Knowledge acquisition The process of document annotation for the Semantic Web is complex and time consuming, as it requires a great deal of manual annotation. Information extraction from texts (IE) is a technology used by some very recent systems for reducing the burden of annotation. The integration of IE systems in annotation tools is quite a new development and there is still the necessity of thinking the impact of the IE system on the whole annotation process. In this paper we initially discuss a number of requirements for the use of IE as upport for annotation. Then we present and discuss a model of interaction that addresses such issues and Melita, an annotation framework that implements a methodology for active annotation for the Semantic Web based on IE. Finally we present an experiment that quantifies the gain in using IE as support to human annotators. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/123/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/123/01/ekaw2002.pdf

oai:aktors.org:124 2003-02-27

S-CREAM Semi-automatic CREAtion of Metadata Handschuh, Dr. Siegfried Staab, Dr. Steffen Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Knowledge acquisition Richly interlinked, machine-understandable data constitute the basis for the Semantic Web. We provide a framework, S-CREAM,that allows for creation of metadata and is trainable for a speci¯c domain. Annotating web documents is one of the major techniques for creating metadata on the web. The implementation of S-CREAM, Ont-O-Mat supports now the semi-automatic annotation of web pages. This semi- automatic annotation is based on the information extraction component Amilcare. Ont-O-Mat extract with the help of Amilcare knowledge structure from web pages through the use of knowledge extraction rules. These rules are the result of a learning-cycle based on already annotated pages. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/124/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/124/01/ekaw2002scream-sub.pdf

oai:aktors.org:125 2003-02-27

User-Centred Onlology Learning for Knowledge Management Brewster, Mr. Christopher Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Wilks, Prof. Yorick Knowledge acquisition Automatic ontology building is a vital issue in many fields where they are currently built manually. This paper presents a user-centred methodology for ontology construction based on the use of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. In our approach, the user selects a corpus of texts and sketches a preliminary ontology (or selects an existing one) for a domain with a preliminary vocabulary associated to the elements in the ontology (lexicalisa-tions). Examples of sentences involving such lexicalisation (e.g. ISA relation) in the corpus are automatically retrieved by the system. Retrieved examples are validated by the user and used by an adaptive Information Extraction system to generate patterns that discover other lexicalisations of the same objects in the ontology, possibly identifying new concepts or relations. New instances are added to the existing ontology or used to tune it. This process is repeated until a satisfactory ontology is obtained. The methodology largely automates the on-tology construction process and the output is an ontology with an associated trained leaner to be used for further ontology modifications. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/125/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/125/01/brewster_nldb02.pdf

oai:aktors.org:126 2003-02-27

Challenges in Information Extraction from Text for Knowledge Management Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Knowledge acquisition Nowadays, most knowledge is stored in an unstructured textual format. We can’t query it in simple ways, thus automatic systems can’t use the contained knowledge and humans can’t easily manage it. The traditional knowledge management process for knowledge engineers has been to manually identify and extract knowledge—a complex and time-consuming process that requires a great deal of manual input. As an example consider the collection of interviews to experts (protocols) and their analysis by knowledge engineers in order to codify, model and extract the knowledge of an expert in a particular domain. In this context, information extraction from texts is one of the most promising areas of human language technology for KM applications. 2001-11-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/126/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/126/01/challenges.pdf

oai:aktors.org:127 2003-02-27

Using HLT for Acquiring, Retrieving and Publishing Knowledge in AKT: Position Paper Bontcheva, Dr. Kalina Brewster, Mr. Christopher Ciravegna, Dr. Fabio Cunningham, Dr. Hamish Guthrie, Dr. Louise Gaizauskas, Dr. Rob Wilks, Prof. Yorick Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing AKT is a major research project applying a variety of technologies to knowledge management. Knowledge is a dynamic, ubiquitous resource, which is to be found equally in an expert's head, under terabytes of data, or explicitly stated in manuals. AKT will extend knowledge management technologies to exploit the potential of the semantic web, covering the use of knowledge over its entire lifecycle, from acquisition to maintenance and deletion. In this paper we discuss how HLT will be used in AKT and how the use of HLT will affect different areas of KM, such as knowledge acquisition, retrieval and publishing. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/127/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/127/01/HLT_for_KM.pdf

oai:aktors.org:129 2003-02-27

Techniques for Automated Taxonomy Building: Towards Ontologies for Knowledge Management Brewster, Mr. Christopher Knowledge acquisition Ontologies have become widely accepted as the main method for representing knowledge in Knowledge Management (KM) applica-tions. Given the continuous and rapid change and dynamic nature of knowledge in all fields, automated methods for construct-ing ontologies are of great importance. All ontologies or taxonomies currently in use have been hand built and require consider-able manpower to keep up to date. Taxono-mies are less logically rigorous than ontolo-gies, and in this paper we consider the re-quirements for a system which automatically constructed taxonomies. There are a number of potentially useful methods for construct-ing hierarchically organised concepts from a collection of texts and there are a number of automatic methods which permit one to as-sociate one word with another. The impor-tant issue for the successful development of this research area is to identify techniques for labelling the relation between two candi-date terms, if one exists. We consider a number of possible approaches and argue that the majority are unsuitable for our re-quirements. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/129/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/129/01/BrewsterCLUK02.pdf

oai:aktors.org:130 2003-02-27

Knowledge Maintenance and the Frame Problem Brewster, Mr. Christopher Knowledge maintenance Knowledge maintenance is a major challenge for both knowledge management and the Semantic Web. Operating over the Semantic Web, there will be a network of collaborating agents, each with their own ontologies or knowledge bases. Change in the knowledge state of one agent may need to be propagated across a number of agents and their associated ontologies. The challenge is to decide how to propagate a change of knowl-edge state. The effects of a change in knowledge state cannot be known in advance, and so an agent cannot know who should be informed unless it adopts a simple ‘tell everyone – every-thing’ strategy. This situation is highly reminis-cent of the classic Frame Problem in AI. We argue that for agent-based technologies to suc-ceed, far greater attention must be given to creat-ing an appropriate model for knowledge update. In a closed system, simple strategies are possible (e.g. ‘sleeping dog’ or ‘cheap test’ or even com-plete checking). However, in an open system where cause and effect are unpredictable, a co-herent cost-benefit based model of agent interac-tion is essential. Otherwise, the effectiveness of every act of knowledge update/maintenance is brought into question. 2003-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/130/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/130/01/Brewster_CLUK03.pdf

oai:aktors.org:132 2003-02-27

Design Issues for Agent-based Resource Locator Systems Wills, Dr Gary Alani, Dr Harith Ashri, Mr Ronald Kalfoglou, Dr Yannis Kim, Dr Sanghee AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge retrieval Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling While knowledge is viewed by many as an asset, it is often difficult to locate particular items within a large electronic corpus. This paper presents an agent based framework for the location of resources to resolve a specific query, and considers the associated design issue. Aspects of the work presented complements current research into both expertise finders and recommender systems. The essential issues for the proposed design are scalability, together with the ability to learn and adapt to changing resources. As knowledge is often implicit within electronic resources, and therefore difficult to locate, we have proposed the use of ontologies, to extract the semantics and infer meaning to obtain the results required. We explore the use of communities of practice, applying ontology-based networks, and e-mail message exchanges to aid the resource discovery process. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/132/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000132/02/pakm02-gbw-final.pdf

oai:aktors.org:135 2003-02-27

Knowledge Life Cycle Management over a Distributed Architecture Schorlemmer, Dr Marco Potter, Dr Stephen Robertson, Dr David Sleeman, Prof Derek Knowledge maintenance In order to address problems stemming from the dynamic nature of distributed systems, there is a need to be able to express the often neglected notions of the evolution and change of the knowledge components of such systems. This need becomes more pressing when one considers the potential of the Internet for distributed knowledge-based problem solving --- and the pragmatic issues surrounding knowledge integrity. In this paper, we introduce a formal calculus for describing transformations in the `life cycles' of knowledge components, along with ideas about the nature of distributed environments in which the ideas underpinning the calculus can be realised. The formality and level of abstraction of this language encourage the analysis of knowledge histories and allows useful properties about this knowledge to be inferred. These ideas are illustrated through the discussion of a particular case-study in knowledge evolution. 2002-01-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/135/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/135/01/klcm.pdf

oai:aktors.org:136 2003-02-27

Enabling Services for Distributed Environments: Ontology Extraction and Knowledge-Base Characterisation Sleeman, Prof Derek Robertson, Dr David Potter, Dr Stephen Schorlemmer, Dr Marco Knowledge reuse Existing knowledge base resources have the potential to be valuable components of the Semantic Web and similar knowledge-based environments. However, from the perspective of these environments, these resources are often undercharacterised, lacking the ontological and structural characterisation that would enable them to be exploited fully. In this paper we discuss two currently independent services, both integrated with their environment via a brokering mechanism. The first of these services is an ontology extraction tool, which can be used to identify ontological knowledge implicit in a knowledge base. The second service involves characterising a given knowledge base in terms of the topic it addresses and the structure of its knowledge. This characterisation should permit a knowledge base to be located and assessed as a potential candidate for re-use in a more intelligent and flexible manner. The discussion of some related research into brokering systems illustrates the roles that these services can play in distributed knowledge architectures as precursors to problem-directed transformation and reuse of knowledge resources. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/136/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/136/01/oekbc.pdf

oai:aktors.org:137 2003-02-27

Duality in Knowledge Sharing Schorlemmer, Dr Marco Knowledge reuse I propose a formalisation of knowledge sharing scenarios that aims at capturing the crucial role played by an existing duality between ontological theories to be merged and particular situations to be linked. I use diagrams in the Chu category and cocones and colimits over these diagrams to account for the reliability and optimality of knowledge sharing systems and show the advantage of this approach by re-analysing a system that shares knowledge between a probabilistic logic program and Bayesian belief networks. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/137/ ps http://eprints.aktors.org/secure/00000137/01/duality.ps

oai:aktors.org:138 2003-02-27

Automated Support for Composition of Transformational Components in Knowledge Engineering Schorlemmer, Dr Marco Robertson, Dr David Potter, Dr Stephen Knowledge maintenance The knowledge engineering world provides a rich source of software components for transforming formally expressed knowledge on a large scale, such as induction systems, knowledge base refiners and ontology merging tools. Although most of these systems have been designed as stand-alone components, there is interest in making them accessible on the Web, with the ultimate goal in mind that a knowledge engineer should be able, with a small amount of intellectual effort, to locate and assemble sequences of these components to perform complex transformations on large repositories of knowledge. The sorts of transformations used in knowledge engineering are not always trustworthy: some may not preserve the semantics of the knowledge transformed; some may not be able to perform a given transformation reliably under all circumstances. Therefore, it is crucial to have ways of inspecting the key properties we expect to be preserved by each transformational component and of describing how these properties change as new transformations are applied. We present initial experiments on a large-scale knowledge engineering problem and show how an abstract characterisation of knowledge-transformation steps, accompanied by a customisable editor, can allow a high degree of automation in this task. With such an editor we can analyse and represent sequences of general transformation steps and check if properties such as subsumption, completeness and soundness are preserved during different stages of the transformation, by analysing the structure of these sequences. 2002-01-01 Departmental Technical Report http://eprints.aktors.org/138/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/138/01/asctcke.pdf

oai:aktors.org:150 2003-03-01

Visualizing Argumentation: Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Computer Supported Argument Visualization is attracting attention across education, science, public policy and business. More than ever, we need sense-making tools to help negotiate understanding in the face of multi-stakeholder, ill-structured problems. In order to be effective, these tools must support human cognitive and discursive processes, and provide suitable representations, services and user interfaces. Visualizing Argumentation is written by practitioners and researchers for colleagues working in collaborative knowledge media, educational technology and organizational sense-making. It will also be of interest to theorists interested in software tools which embody different argumentation models. Particular emphasis is placed on the usability and effectiveness of tools in different contexts. Among the key features are: * Case studies covering educational, public policy, business and scientific argumentation * Resources on the companion website: www.VisualizingArgumentation.info "The old leadership idea of "vision" has been transformed in the face of wicked problems in the new organizational landscape. In this excellent book we find a comprehensive yet practical guide for using visual methods to collaborate in the construction of shared knowledge. This book is essential for managers and leaders seeking new ways of navigating complexity and chaos in the workplace." Charles J. Palus, Ph.D, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA 2003-01-01 Book http://eprints.aktors.org/150/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/150/01/Flyer_Visualizing_Argumentation.pdf coverimage http://eprints.aktors.org/150/02/book_cover.gif

oai:aktors.org:151 2003-03-01

Semantically Marked Up... Now What? Buckingham Shum, Simon Domingue, John Motta, Enrico Knowledge retrieval Knowledge publishing "Wired...now what?",was the challenge from Apple's Mark Miller to educationalists as the Internet took off. A new infrastructure was being laid, but even now we still barely know how to use it effectively for learning. We can expect a similar scenario to unfold for the semantic web. Currently, the semantic web community is necessarily preoccupied with infrastructure design (e.g., knowledge representation languages for the web, scaling issues,standardising terminologies and agent interoperability). But once this infrastructure is in place, more persistent questions will remain concerning the technology's relationship to the people expected to use it. Specifically, we ask: How can the semantic web be used to support people in knowledge-intensive work? "Semantically marked up...now what?", is therefore a worthwhile question to balance prevailing discussion. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/151/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/151/02/SemWebNowWhat.pdf

oai:aktors.org:152 2003-03-01

A Spreading Activation Framework for Ontology-enhanced Adaptive Information Access within Organisations Hasan, Dr Md Maruf Knowledge retrieval AKT Submitted Knowledge maintenance This research investigates a unique Indexing Structure and Navigational Interface which integrates (1) ontology-driven knowledge-base (2) statistically derived indexing parameters, and (3) experts' feedback into a single Spreading Activation Framework to harness knowledge from heterogeneous knowledge assets. Within an organisation, organisational ontologies capture precise knowledge about organisational entities: people, projects, activities, information sources and so on. We extract useful entities and their relationships from an ontology-driven knowledge base. We also process collections of documents (archives) accumulated in heterogeneous information-bases within an organisation and derive indexing parameters. This information is then mapped to a weighted graph (spreading activation network). The network contains three distinct sets of nodes representing documents, ontological entities and statistically derived entities. Document nodes are connected to both ontology-driven entities and statistically derived entities, and vice-versa with relevant weights. Retrieval is performed by spreading query-based activation into the network and selecting the most-activated nodes. Experts as well as users in the organisation either navigate the network using associative relations among nodes or with specific queries. Expert’s feedback is captured and the network weights are continuously adapted. This framework essentially combines precise knowledge (ontology-driven), non-precise knowledge (statistically driven) and Expert’s feedback (adaptation and refining) into a single framework for effective information retrieval and navigation. 2003-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/152/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/152/01/1SSS103MHasan.pdf

oai:aktors.org:155 2003-03-01

Compendium: Making Meetings into Knowledge Events Selvin, A Buckingham Shum, S Sierhuis, M Conklin, J Zimmermann, B Palus, C Drath, W Horth, D Domingue, J Motta, E Li, G AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge reuse Knowledge retrieval Knowledge acquisition Knowledge publishing Knowledge modelling Knowledge maintenance In this paper, we describe the Compendium methodology and suite of tools. Compendium is the result of over a decade's research and development at the intersection of collaborative modeling, organizational memory, computer-supported argumentation and meeting facilitation. We claim that Compendium offers innovative strategies for tackling several of the key challenges in managing knowledge: · improving communication between disparate communities tackling ill-structured problems · real time capture and integration of hybrid material (both predictable/formal, and unexpected/informal) into a reusable group memory · transforming the resulting resource into the right representational formats for different stakeholders. Our starting point is the face-to-face meeting, potentially the most pervasive knowledge-based activity in working life, but also one of the hardest to do well. Meetings in Compendium's perspective: 1. are untapped knowledge-intensive events: often they are unfocused, but they can be improved with facilitated tools that help participants express and visualize views in a shared, common display; 2. can be more tightly woven into the fabric of work: they are preceded and followed by much other communication and the generation of associated artifacts. Weaving the process and products of meetings into this broader web of activity must therefore be a priority. Firstly, we introduce the core elements of Compendium's approach to mediating face-to-face meetings (now used in a variety of large scale projects). We have found that a combination of facilitation with visual hypertext tools can improve potentially unproductive or explosive meetings between multiple stakeholders with competing priorities. Diverse perspectives can be captured, structured and integrated in a way that all participants collectively own as a trace of their discussions. In the process this constructs a structured, group memory which shows where the same concepts have been discussed in different contexts, why decisions were made, and allows one to harvest related concepts from multiple meetings. Secondly, we describe how these 'conversational maps' can be integrated with pre/post-meeting activities and documents. Compendium's maps are designed to support the granular representation of concepts (as hypertext database objects) so that they can be spatially organized, recombined and reused in multiple contexts. We are developing ways to convert material in conventional applications such as written documents, emails and spreadsheets into concept maps, so that their contents can be analysed in new ways, and integrated with other maps. Conversely, we have placed great emphasis on generating alternate documents directly from maps, since one of the most common purposes of meetings is to advance a project deliverable of some sort, typically, an organizational document of an established genre, using established notations and stylistic conventions. We automatically transform visual maps to file formats for other applications, so that other user communities can immediately benefit from the meeting's collective work. This is illustrated in a number of ways: · Transforming maps into formal notations (eg. data flow diagrams), and requirements documents following established formats · Using maps as a collaborative knowledge-elicitation interface, generating input for knowledge-based applications and simulations · From synchronous to asynchronous interaction: transforming maps created in real time into web-based interactive discussion-documents to solicit wider, asynchronous input · Ontology-based formalization: in domains where it is possible to work with formal knowledge models, discussion-documents can be annotated with links to ontologies · Engaging with visual, emotional knowledge: using maps to capture collaborative sense-making using images to express intuitions and metaphors. To conclude, Compendium excels in enabling groups to collectively elicit, organize and validate information required by a particular community for a particular purpose. In order to integrate this with pre/post-meeting processes and artifacts, these maps can be generated by, and transformed into, other document formats, enabling asynchronous discussions around the contents of maps, and other forms of computation and analysis. In our experiences to date, the domain independence of Compendium's mapping technique for meetings, combined with its interoperability with domain-specific applications, provides a powerful platform for knowledge construction and negotiation. 2001-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/155/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/155/01/kmi-tr-103.pdf

oai:aktors.org:156 2003-03-01

CoAKTinG: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid Buckingham Shum, S DeRoure, D Eisenstadt, M Shadbolt, N Tate, A CoAKTinG Knowledge acquisition Grid infrastructures coupled with semantic web linkage and reasoning open up intriguing new possibilities for scientific collaboration. In this short paper, we outline the research agenda and collaboration technologies under development within the CoAKTinG project: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid. CoAKTinG will provide tools to assist scientific collaboration by integrating intelligent meeting spaces, ontologically annotated media streams from online meetings, decision rationale and group memory capture, meeting facilitation, issue handling, planning and coordination support, constraint satisfaction, and instant messaging/presence. Their integration is illustrated through an extended use scenario. 2002-01-01 Conference Paper http://eprints.aktors.org/156/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/156/01/CoAKTinG-WACE2002.pdf

oai:aktors.org:157 2003-03-01

JIME: An Interactive Journal for Interactive Media Buckingham Shum, S Sumner, T AKT Showcase Papers Knowledge publishing How can new media positively transform scholarly practices? In this article, we describe the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME: www-jime.open.ac.uk). JIME's peer review process is designed to promote multidisciplinary dialogue through the use of a purpose-designed Web document-discussion interface. This innovative peer review model and the resulting 'enriched' digital documents illustrate some of the possibilities for promoting knowledge construction and preserving intellectual products in digital scholarly publications. We present JIME's technical infrastructure, editorial policy, and peer review process, and discuss how these features are used to support the journal's goals. Finally, we conclude by considering what aspects of our approach might be suitable for eJournals in other disciplines. 2001-01-01 Journal (Paginated) http://eprints.aktors.org/157/ pdf http://eprints.aktors.org/157/01/kmi-tr-99.pdf

oai:aktors.org:162 2003-03-01

Informal Semantics for the FBPML Data Language Chen-Burger, Dr. Yun-Heh