Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future

Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent

Ontological Implications of the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model

The Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM) was developed to cope with the different layers of interoperation of modeling & simulation applications. It introduced technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, and conceptual layers of interoperation and showed how they are related to the ideas of integratability, interoperability, and composability. This paper will be presented in the invited session Ontology Driven Interoperability for Agile Applications using Information Systems: Requirements and Applications for Agent Mediated Decision Support at WMSCI 2006

Enabling long-term oceanographic research : changing data practices, information management strategies and informatics

Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 55 (2008): 2132-2142, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.05.009.Interdisciplinary global ocean science requires new ways of thinking about data and data management. With new data policies and growing technological capabilities, datasets of increasing variety and complexity are being made available digitally and data management is coming to be recognized as an integral part of scientific research. To meet the changing expectations of scientists collecting data and of data reuse by others, collaborative strategies involving diverse teams of information professionals are developing. These changes are stimulating the growth of information infrastructures that support multi-scale sampling, data repositories, and data integration. Two examples of oceanographic projects incorporating data management in partnership with science programs are discussed: the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research program (Palmer LTER) and the United States Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (US JGOFS). Lessons learned from a decade of data management within these communities provide an experience base from which to develop information management strategies – short-term and long-term. Ocean Informatics provides one example of a conceptual framework for managing the complexities inherent to sharing oceanographic data. Elements are introduced that address the economies-of-scale and the complexities-of-scale pertinent to a broader vision of information management and scientific research.Support is provided by NSF OPP-0217282, OCE-0405069, HSD-0433369 and Scripps Institution of Oceanography (K.S.Baker) and by NSF OCE-8814310, OCE-0097291, OCE- 0510046 and OCE-0646353 (C.Chandler)

Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

Interoperating networked embedded systems to compose the web of things

Improvements in science and technology have enhanced our quality of life with better healthcare services, comfortable living and transportation among others. Human beings are now able to travel faster, communicate across the globe in fraction of seconds, understand nature better than ever before and generate and consume huge amount of information. The Internet played a central role in this development by providing a vast network of networks. Leveraging this global infrastructure, the World Wide Web is providing a shared information space for such unprecedented amount of knowledge that is mostly contributed and used by human beings. It has played such a critical role in the adoption of the Internet, it is common to find people referring specific web sites as Internet. This adoption coupled with advances in manufacturing of computing elements that led to the reduction in size and price has introduced a new wave of technology, called the Internet of Things. A rudimentary description of the Internet of Things (IoT) is an Internet that connects, not only traditional computing devices (with higher capacity and provide user interface) but also everyday physical objects or ’Things’ around us. These objects are augmented by small networked embedded computing elements that interact with the host via sensors and actuators. It is estimated that there will be Billions of such devices and Trillions of dollars of market value distributed in multiple aspects of our lives; such as healthcare, smart home, smart industries and smart cities. However, there are many challenges that are hindering the wide adoption of IoT. One of these challenges is heterogeneity of network interfaces, platforms, data formats and many standards that led to vertical islands of systems that are not interoperable at various levels. To address the lack of interoperability, this thesis presents the author’s contributions in three categories. The first part is a lightweight middleware called LISA that address variations in protocols and platforms. It is designed to work within the constrained resources of the networked embedded devices. The overhead of the middleware is evaluated and compared with other related frameworks. The second set of contributions focus on higher level of system integration and related challenges. It includes a domain specific IoT language (DoS-IL) and a server implementation to support the proposed code on demand approach. The scripting language enables re-configuration of the behaviour of systems during integration or functional changes. The related server provides abstraction of the physical object and its embedded device to provide mobility services in addition to hosting the scripts. The last set of contributions are focused on either generalized architectural style design or a specific healthcare use case. In summary, the overall thesis presents a highlevel architectural style that provides ease of understanding and communication of IoT systems, serves as a means for system level integration and provides the desired quality attributes for IoT systems. The other contributions fit in the architectural style to facilitate the adoption of the style or showcase specific instances of the architecture’s use. The performance of the middleware, the scripting language and the server including their resource utilization and overhead have been analyzed and presented. In general, the combination of the contributions enable inter-operation of networked embedded systems that serve as building blocks for the Web of Things - a global system of IoT systems

Research and Development of a Positioning Service for Learning Networks for Lifelong Learning

Kalz, M. (2006). Research and Development of a Positioning Service for Learning Networks for Lifelong Learning. Presentation given at the Doctoral Consortium of the First European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning. October, 1-4, 2006, Crete.Presentation at the Doctoral Consortium of the First European Conference for Technology Enhanced Learning

Novel processes for smart grid information exchange and knowledge representation using the IEC common information model

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The IEC Common Information Model (CIM) is of central importance in enabling smart grid interoperability. Its continual development aims to meet the needs of the smart grid for semantic understanding and knowledge representation for a widening domain of resources and processes. With smart grid evolution the importance of information and data management has become an increasingly pressing issue not only because far more data is being generated using modern sensing, control and measuring devices but also because information is now becoming recognised as the ‘integral component’ that facilitates the optimal flexibility required of the smart grid. This thesis looks at the impacts of CIM implementation upon the landscape of smart grid issues and presents research from within National Grid contributing to three key areas in support of further CIM deployment. Taking the issue of Enterprise Information Management first, an information management framework is presented for CIM deployment at National Grid. Following this the development and demonstration of a novel secure cloud computing platform to handle such information is described. Power system application (PSA) models of the grid are partial knowledge representations of a shared reality. To develop the completeness of our understanding of this reality it is necessary to combine these representations. The second research contribution reports on a novel methodology for a CIM-based model repository to align PSA representations and provide a knowledge resource for building utility business intelligence of the grid. The third contribution addresses the need for greater integration of information relating to energy storage, an essential aspect of smart energy management. It presents the strategic rationale for integrated energy modeling and a novel extension to the existing CIM standards for modeling grid-scale energy storage. Significantly, this work has already contributed to a larger body of work on modeling Distributed Energy Resources currently under development at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the USA.Dr. Martin Bradley on behalf of National Grid Plc. and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC