Knowledge web: realising the semantic web... all the way to knowledge-enhanced multimedia documents

The semantic web and semantic web services are major efforts in order to spread and to integrate knowledge technology to the whole web. The Knowledge Web network of excellence aims at supporting their developments at the best and largest European level and supporting industry in adopting them. It especially investigates the solution of scalability, heterogeneity and dynamics obstacles to the full development of the semantic web. We explain how Knowledge Web results should benefit knowledge-enhanced multimedia applications

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Continuous Improvement Through Knowledge-Guided Analysis in Experience Feedback

Continuous improvement in industrial processes is increasingly a key element of competitiveness for industrial systems. The management of experience feedback in this framework is designed to build, analyze and facilitate the knowledge sharing among problem solving practitioners of an organization in order to improve processes and products achievement. During Problem Solving Processes, the intellectual investment of experts is often considerable and the opportunities for expert knowledge exploitation are numerous: decision making, problem solving under uncertainty, and expert configuration. In this paper, our contribution relates to the structuring of a cognitive experience feedback framework, which allows a flexible exploitation of expert knowledge during Problem Solving Processes and a reuse such collected experience. To that purpose, the proposed approach uses the general principles of root cause analysis for identifying the root causes of problems or events, the conceptual graphs formalism for the semantic conceptualization of the domain vocabulary and the Transferable Belief Model for the fusion of information from different sources. The underlying formal reasoning mechanisms (logic-based semantics) in conceptual graphs enable intelligent information retrieval for the effective exploitation of lessons learned from past projects. An example will illustrate the application of the proposed approach of experience feedback processes formalization in the transport industry sector

Information modelling for the development of sustainable construction (MINDOC)

In previous decades, controlling the environmental impact through lifecycle analysis has become a topical issue in the building sector. However, there are some problems when trying to exchange information between experts for conducting various studies like the environmental assessment of the building. There is also heterogeneity between construction product databases because they do not have the same characteristics and do not use the same basis to measure the environmental impact of each construction product. Moreover, there are still difficulties to exploit the full potential of linking BIM, SemanticWeb and databases of construction products because the idea of combining them is relatively recent. The goal of this thesis is to increase the flexibility needed to assess the building’s environmental impact in a timely manner. First, our research determines gaps in interoperability in the AEC (Architecture Engineering and Construction) domain. Then, we fill some of the shortcomings encountered in the formalization of building information and the generation of building data in Semantic Web formats. We further promote efficient use of BIM throughout the building life cycle by integrating and referencing environmental data on construction products into a BIM tool. Moreover, semantics has been improved by the enhancement of a well-known building-based ontology (namely ifcOWL for Industry Foundation Classes Web Ontology Language). Finally, we experience a case study of a small building for our methodology

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities