Dynamic integration of context model constraints in web service processes

Autonomic Web service composition has been a challenging topic for some years. The context in which composition takes places determines essential aspects. A context model can provide meaningful composition information for services process composition. An ontology-based approach for context information integration is the basis of a constraint approach to dynamically integrate context validation into service processes. The dynamic integration of context constraints into an orchestrated service process is a necessary direction to achieve autonomic service composition

Ontology driven multi-agent systems : an architecture for sensor web applications.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009.Advances in sensor technology and space science have resulted in the availability of vast quantities of high quality earth observation data. This data can be used for monitoring the earth and to enhance our understanding of natural processes. Sensor Web researchers are working on constructing a worldwide computing infrastructure that enables dynamic sharing and analysis of complex heterogeneous earth observation data sets. Key challenges that are currently being investigated include data integration; service discovery, reuse and composition; semantic interoperability; and system dynamism. Two emerging technologies that have shown promise in dealing with these challenges are ontologies and software agents. This research investigates how these technologies can be integrated into an Ontology Driven Multi-Agent System (ODMAS) for the Sensor Web. The research proposes an ODMAS framework and an implemented middleware platform, i.e. the Sensor Web Agent Platform (SWAP). SWAP deals with ontology construction, ontology use, and agent based design, implementation and deployment. It provides a semantic infrastructure, an abstract architecture, an internal agent architecture and a Multi-Agent System (MAS) middleware platform. Distinguishing features include: the incorporation of Bayesian Networks to represent and reason about uncertain knowledge; ontologies to describe system entities such as agent services, interaction protocols and agent workflows; and a flexible adapter based MAS platform that facilitates agent development, execution and deployment. SWAP aims to guide and ease the design, development and deployment of dynamic alerting and monitoring applications. The efficacy of SWAP is demonstrated by two satellite image processing applications, viz. wildfire detection and monitoring informal settlement. This approach can provide significant benefits to a wide range of Sensor Web users. These include: developers for deploying agents and agent based applications; end users for accessing, managing and visualising information provided by real time monitoring applications, and scientists who can use the Sensor Web as a scientific computing platform to facilitate knowledge sharing and discovery. An Ontology Driven Multi-Agent Sensor Web has the potential to forever change the way in which geospatial data and knowledge is accessed and used. This research describes this far reaching vision, identifies key challenges and provides a first step towards the vision

A linked data-driven & service-oriented architecture for sharing educational resources

The two fundamental aims of managing educational resources are to enable resources to be reusable and interoperable and to enable Web-scale sharing of resources across learning communities. Currently, a variety of approaches have been proposed to expose and manage educational resources and their metadata on the Web. These are usually based on heterogeneous metadata standards and schemas, such as IEEE LOM or ADL SCORM, and diverse repository interfaces such as OAI-PMH or SQI. Also, there is still a lack of usage of controlled vocabularies and available data sets that could replace the widespread use of unstructured text for describing resources. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has proven that it offers a set of successful principles that have the potential to alleviate the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we introduce an architecture and prototype which is fundamentally based on (a) Linked Data principles and (b) Service-orientation to resolve the integration issues for sharing educational resources

Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems

The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications