Knowledge-based document filing for texpros

This dissertation presents a knowledge-based document filing system for TEXPROS. The requirements of a. personal document processing system are investigated. In order for the system to be used in various application domains, a flexible, dynamic modeling approach is employed by getting the user involved in document modeling. The office documents are described using a dual-model which consists of a document type hierarchy and a folder organization. The document type hierarchy is used to capture the layout, logical and conceptual structures of documents. The folder organization, which is defined by the user, emulates the real world structure for organizing and storing documents in an office environment. The document filing and retrieval are predicate-driven. The user can specify filing criteria and queries in terms of predicates. The predicate specification and folder organization specification are described. It is shown that the new specifications can prevent false drops which happen in the previous approach. The dual models are incorporated by a three-level storage architecture. This storage architecture supports efficient document and information retrieval by limiting the searches to those frame instances of a document type within those folders which appear to be the most similar to the corresponding queries, Specifically, a. three-level retrieval strategy is used in document and information retrieval. Firstly, a knowledge-based query preprocess is applied for efficiently reducing the search space to a small set of frame instances, using the information in the query formula. Secondly, the knowledge and content-based retrieval on the small set of frame instances is applied. Finally, the third level storage provides a platform for adopting potential content-based multimedia document retrieval techniques. A knowledge-based predicate evaluation engine is described for automating document filing. The dissertation presents a knowledge representation model. The knowledge base is dynamicly created by a learning agent, which demonstrates that the notion of flexible and dynamic modeling is applicable. The folder organization is implemented using an agent-based architecture. Each folder is monitored by a filing agent. The basic operations for constructing and reorganizing a folder organization are defined. The dissertation also discusses the cooperation among the filing agents, which is needed for implementing the folder organization

On document filing based upon predicates

This dissertation presents a formal approach to modeling documents in a personal office environment, proposes a heterogeneous algebraic query language to manipulating objects (folders) in the document model, and investigates a predicate-driven document filing system for automatically filing documents. The document model was initially proposed in [38] which adopts a very natural view for describing the office documents using the relational and object-oriented paradigms. The model employs a dual approach to classifying and categorizing office documents by defining both a document type hierarchy and a folder organization. This dissertation extends and specifies formally the document model. Documents are partitioned into different classes, each document class being represented by frame template which describes the properties of the documents of the class. A particular office document, summarized from the view point of its frame template, yields a synopsis of the document which is called frame instances. Frame instances are grouped into a folder on the basis of user-defined criteria, specified as predicates, which determine whether a frame instance belongs to a folder. Folders, each of which is a heterogeneous set of frame instances, can be naturally organized into a folder organization. The folder organization specifying the document filing view is then defined using predicates and a directed graph. However, some operators in the algebraic query language [38] do not support the heterogeneous property. This dissertation proposes an algebra-based query language that gives full support to this heterogeneous property. We investigate the construction problem of a folder organization: does it allow a user to add a new folder with an arbitrary local predicate? Given a folder organization, creating a new folder with arbitrarily defined predicate may cause two abnormalities: inapplicable edges (filing paths) and redundant folders. To deal such abnormalities in the process of constructing a folder organization, the concept of predicate consistency is discussed and an algorithm is proposed for determining whether the predicate of a new folder is consistent with the existing folder organization. The global predicate of a folder governs the content of the folder. However, the predicates of folders (that is, global predicates) do not uniquely specify a folder organization. Then, we investigate the reconstruction problem: under what circumstance can we uniquely recover the folder organization from its global predicates? The problem is solved in terms of graph-theoretic concepts such as associated digraphs, transitive closure, and redundant/non-redundant filing paths. A transitive closure inversion algorithm is then presented which efficiently recovers a folder organization digraph from its associated digraph. After defining a folder organization, we can file a frame instance into the folder organization. A document filing algorithm describes the procedure of filing a frame instance. However, the critical issue of the algorithm is how to evaluate whether a frame instance satisfies the predicate of a folder in a folder organization. In order to solve this issue, a thesaurus, an association dictionary and a knowledge base are then introduced. The thesaurus specifies the association relationship among the key terms that are actually residing in the system and terms that are used by users. An association dictionary gives the association relationship between an attribute of a predicate and a frame template defined in a folder organization. A knowledge base represents background knowledge in a certain application domain

Value-driven Security Agreements in Extended Enterprises

Today organizations are highly interconnected in business networks called extended enterprises. This is mostly facilitated by outsourcing and by new economic models based on pay-as-you-go billing; all supported by IT-as-a-service. Although outsourcing has been around for some time, what is now new is the fact that organizations are increasingly outsourcing critical business processes, engaging on complex service bundles, and moving infrastructure and their management to the custody of third parties. Although this gives competitive advantage by reducing cost and increasing flexibility, it increases security risks by eroding security perimeters that used to separate insiders with security privileges from outsiders without security privileges. The classical security distinction between insiders and outsiders is supplemented with a third category of threat agents, namely external insiders, who are not subject to the internal control of an organization but yet have some access privileges to its resources that normal outsiders do not have. Protection against external insiders requires security agreements between organizations in an extended enterprise. Currently, there is no practical method that allows security officers to specify such requirements. In this paper we provide a method for modeling an extended enterprise architecture, identifying external insider roles, and for specifying security requirements that mitigate security threats posed by these roles. We illustrate our method with a realistic example

Modeling Terrorist Radicalization

Recent high-profile terrorism arrests and litigation in New York, Colorado, and Detroit have brought public attention to the question of how the government should respond to the possibility of domestic-origin terrorism linked to al Qaeda. This symposium essay identifies and discussing one emerging approach in the United States and Europe which attends to the process of terrorist “radicalization.” States on both sides of the Atlantic are investing increasingly in developing an epistemology of terrorist violence. The results have implications for how policing resources are allocated, whether privacy rights are respected, and how religious liberty may be exercised. This essay traces the development of state discourses on “radicalization” in the United States and the United Kingdom. It argues that understanding this new “radicalization” discourse entails attention to interactions between nations and between the federal government and states as well as to the political economy of counter-terrorism

Characterizing Transgender Health Issues in Twitter

Although there are millions of transgender people in the world, a lack of information exists about their health issues. This issue has consequences for the medical field, which only has a nascent understanding of how to identify and meet this population's health-related needs. Social media sites like Twitter provide new opportunities for transgender people to overcome these barriers by sharing their personal health experiences. Our research employs a computational framework to collect tweets from self-identified transgender users, detect those that are health-related, and identify their information needs. This framework is significant because it provides a macro-scale perspective on an issue that lacks investigation at national or demographic levels. Our findings identified 54 distinct health-related topics that we grouped into 7 broader categories. Further, we found both linguistic and topical differences in the health-related information shared by transgender men (TM) as com-pared to transgender women (TW). These findings can help inform medical and policy-based strategies for health interventions within transgender communities. Also, our proposed approach can inform the development of computational strategies to identify the health-related information needs of other marginalized populations

Benefit-Cost Analysis for Transportation Planning and Public Policy: Towards Multimodal Demand Modeling

This report examines existing methods of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) in two areas, transportation policy and transportation planning, and suggests ways of modifying these methods to account for travel within a multimodal system. Although the planning and policy contexts differ substantially, this report shows how important multimodal impacts can be incorporated into both by using basic econometric techniques and even simpler rule-of-thumb methods. Case studies in transportation planning focus on the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), but benchmark California’s competencies by exploring methods used by other states and local governments. The report concludes with a list and discussion of recommendations for improving transportation planning models and methods. These will have immediate use to decision makers at Caltrans and other state DOTs as they consider directions for developing new planning capabilities. This project also identifies areas, and lays groundwork, for future research. Finally, by fitting the planning models into the broader context of transportation policy, this report will serve as a resource for students and others who wish to better understand BCA and its use in practice

EcoGIS – GIS tools for ecosystem approaches to fisheries management

Executive Summary: The EcoGIS project was launched in September 2004 to investigate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS), marine data, and custom analysis tools can better enable fisheries scientists and managers to adopt Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management (EAFM). EcoGIS is a collaborative effort between NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and four regional Fishery Management Councils. The project has focused on four priority areas: Fishing Catch and Effort Analysis, Area Characterization, Bycatch Analysis, and Habitat Interactions. Of these four functional areas, the project team first focused on developing a working prototype for catch and effort analysis: the Fishery Mapper Tool. This ArcGIS extension creates time-and-area summarized maps of fishing catch and effort from logbook, observer, or fishery-independent survey data sets. Source data may come from Oracle, Microsoft Access, or other file formats. Feedback from beta-testers of the Fishery Mapper was used to debug the prototype, enhance performance, and add features. This report describes the four priority functional areas, the development of the Fishery Mapper tool, and several themes that emerged through the parallel evolution of the EcoGIS project, the concept and implementation of the broader field of Ecosystem Approaches to Management (EAM), data management practices, and other EAM toolsets. In addition, a set of six succinct recommendations are proposed on page 29. One major conclusion from this work is that there is no single “super-tool” to enable Ecosystem Approaches to Management; as such, tools should be developed for specific purposes with attention given to interoperability and automation. Future work should be coordinated with other GIS development projects in order to provide “value added” and minimize duplication of efforts. In addition to custom tools, the development of cross-cutting Regional Ecosystem Spatial Databases will enable access to quality data to support the analyses required by EAM. GIS tools will be useful in developing Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) and providing pre- and post-processing capabilities for spatially-explicit ecosystem models. Continued funding will enable the EcoGIS project to develop GIS tools that are immediately applicable to today’s needs. These tools will enable simplified and efficient data query, the ability to visualize data over time, and ways to synthesize multidimensional data from diverse sources. These capabilities will provide new information for analyzing issues from an ecosystem perspective, which will ultimately result in better understanding of fisheries and better support for decision-making. (PDF file contains 45 pages.

Meeting of the MINDS: an information retrieval research agenda

Since its inception in the late 1950s, the field of Information Retrieval (IR) has developed tools that help people find, organize, and analyze information. The key early influences on the field are well-known. Among them are H. P. Luhn's pioneering work, the development of the vector space retrieval model by Salton and his students, Cleverdon's development of the Cranfield experimental methodology, Spärck Jones' development of idf, and a series of probabilistic retrieval models by Robertson and Croft. Until the development of the WorldWideWeb (Web), IR was of greatest interest to professional information analysts such as librarians, intelligence analysts, the legal community, and the pharmaceutical industry

Putting A Price On Carbon: A Handbook for U.S. Policymakers

This Handbook provides an overview of carbon pricing -- the types of decisions that need to be made in designing a program (including the political decisions about the use of revenue) and the expected economic impacts of alternative approaches. We conducted a thorough review of the literature, selecting a broad array of well-regarded and highly cited studies that represent a range of viewpoints. We expect this Handbook to be useful in the public debate in the United States on whether, how, and when to implement a national carbon price

Topic Modelling of Everyday Sexism Project Entries

The Everyday Sexism Project documents everyday examples of sexism reported by volunteer contributors from all around the world. It collected 100,000 entries in 13+ languages within the first 3 years of its existence. The content of reports in various languages submitted to Everyday Sexism is a valuable source of crowdsourced information with great potential for feminist and gender studies. In this paper, we take a computational approach to analyze the content of reports. We use topic-modelling techniques to extract emerging topics and concepts from the reports, and to map the semantic relations between those topics. The resulting picture closely resembles and adds to that arrived at through qualitative analysis, showing that this form of topic modeling could be useful for sifting through datasets that had not previously been subject to any analysis. More precisely, we come up with a map of topics for two different resolutions of our topic model and discuss the connection between the identified topics. In the low resolution picture, for instance, we found Public space/Street, Online, Work related/Office, Transport, School, Media harassment, and Domestic abuse. Among these, the strongest connection is between Public space/Street harassment and Domestic abuse and sexism in personal relationships.The strength of the relationships between topics illustrates the fluid and ubiquitous nature of sexism, with no single experience being unrelated to another.Comment: preprint, under revie