Knowledge formalization in experience feedback processes : an ontology-based approach

Because of the current trend of integration and interoperability of industrial systems, their size and complexity continue to grow making it more difficult to analyze, to understand and to solve the problems that happen in their organizations. Continuous improvement methodologies are powerful tools in order to understand and to solve problems, to control the effects of changes and finally to capitalize knowledge about changes and improvements. These tools involve suitably represent knowledge relating to the concerned system. Consequently, knowledge management (KM) is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Particularly, the capitalization and sharing of knowledge resulting from experience feedback are elements which play an essential role in the continuous improvement of industrial activities. In this paper, the contribution deals with semantic interoperability and relates to the structuring and the formalization of an experience feedback (EF) process aiming at transforming information or understanding gained by experience into explicit knowledge. The reuse of such knowledge has proved to have significant impact on achieving themissions of companies. However, the means of describing the knowledge objects of an experience generally remain informal. Based on an experience feedback process model and conceptual graphs, this paper takes domain ontology as a framework for the clarification of explicit knowledge and know-how, the aim of which is to get lessons learned descriptions that are significant, correct and applicable

Validation and Evaluation

In this technical report, we present prototypical implementations of innovative tools and methods for personalized and contextualized (multimedia) search, collaborative ontology evolution, ontology evaluation and cost models, and dynamic access and trends in distributed (semantic) knowledge, developed according to the working plan outlined in Technical Report TR-B-12-04. The prototypes complete the next milestone on the path to an integral Corporate Semantic Web architecture based on the three pillars Corporate Ontology Engineering, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Semantic Search, as envisioned in TR-B-08-09

Mapping Big Data into Knowledge Space with Cognitive Cyber-Infrastructure

Big data research has attracted great attention in science, technology, industry and society. It is developing with the evolving scientific paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformational innovation of technologies. However, its nature and fundamental challenge have not been recognized, and its own methodology has not been formed. This paper explores and answers the following questions: What is big data? What are the basic methods for representing, managing and analyzing big data? What is the relationship between big data and knowledge? Can we find a mapping from big data into knowledge space? What kind of infrastructure is required to support not only big data management and analysis but also knowledge discovery, sharing and management? What is the relationship between big data and science paradigm? What is the nature and fundamental challenge of big data computing? A multi-dimensional perspective is presented toward a methodology of big data computing.Comment: 59 page

Enhancing Workflow with a Semantic Description of Scientific Intent

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Ontologies in domain specific languages : a systematic literature review

The systematic literature review conducted in this paper explores the current techniques employed to leverage the development of DSLs using ontologies. Similarities and differences between ontologies and DSLs, techniques to combine DSLs with ontologies, the rationale of these techniques and challenges in the DSL approaches addressed by the used techniques have been investigated. Details about these topics have been provided for each relevant research paper that we were able to investigate in the limited amount of time of one month. At the same time, a synthesis describing the main trends in all the topics mentioned above has been done

Ambient-aware continuous care through semantic context dissemination

Background: The ultimate ambient-intelligent care room contains numerous sensors and devices to monitor the patient, sense and adjust the environment and support the staff. This sensor-based approach results in a large amount of data, which can be processed by current and future applications, e. g., task management and alerting systems. Today, nurses are responsible for coordinating all these applications and supplied information, which reduces the added value and slows down the adoption rate. The aim of the presented research is the design of a pervasive and scalable framework that is able to optimize continuous care processes by intelligently reasoning on the large amount of heterogeneous care data. Methods: The developed Ontology-based Care Platform (OCarePlatform) consists of modular components that perform a specific reasoning task. Consequently, they can easily be replicated and distributed. Complex reasoning is achieved by combining the results of different components. To ensure that the components only receive information, which is of interest to them at that time, they are able to dynamically generate and register filter rules with a Semantic Communication Bus (SCB). This SCB semantically filters all the heterogeneous care data according to the registered rules by using a continuous care ontology. The SCB can be distributed and a cache can be employed to ensure scalability. Results: A prototype implementation is presented consisting of a new-generation nurse call system supported by a localization and a home automation component. The amount of data that is filtered and the performance of the SCB are evaluated by testing the prototype in a living lab. The delay introduced by processing the filter rules is negligible when 10 or fewer rules are registered. Conclusions: The OCarePlatform allows disseminating relevant care data for the different applications and additionally supports composing complex applications from a set of smaller independent components. This way, the platform significantly reduces the amount of information that needs to be processed by the nurses. The delay resulting from processing the filter rules is linear in the amount of rules. Distributed deployment of the SCB and using a cache allows further improvement of these performance results

A Design Theory for Secure Semantic E-Business Processes (SSEBP)

This dissertation develops and evaluates a Design theory. We follow the design science approach (Hevener, et al., 2004) to answer the following research question: "How can we formulate a design theory to guide the analysis and design of Secure Semantic eBusiness processes (SSeBP)?" Goals of SSeBP design theory include (i) unambiguously represent information and knowledge resources involved in eBusiness processes to solve semantic conflicts and integrate heterogeneous information systems; (ii) analyze and model business processes that include access control mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access to resources; and (iii) facilitate the coordination of eBusiness process activities-resources by modeling their dependencies. Business processes modeling techniques such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) (BPMI, 2004) and UML Activity Diagrams (OMG, 2003) lack theoretical foundations and are difficult to verify for correctness and completeness (Soffer and Wand, 2007). Current literature on secure information systems design methods are theoretically underdeveloped and consider security as a non-functional requirement and as an afterthought (Siponen et al. 2006, Mouratidis et al., 2005). SSeBP design theory is one of the first attempts at providing theoretically grounded guidance to design richer secure eBusiness processes for secure and coordinated seamless knowledge exchange among business partners in a value chain. SSeBP design theory allows for the inclusion of non-repudiation mechanisms into the analysis and design of eBusiness processes which lays the foundations for auditing and compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. SSeBP design theory is evaluated through a rigorous multi-method evaluation approach including descriptive, observational, and experimental evaluation. First, SSeBP design theory is validated by modeling business processes of an industry standard named Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) approach. Our model enhances CPFR by incorporating security requirements in the process model, which is critically lacking in the current CPFR technical guidelines. Secondly, we model the demand forecasting and capacity planning business processes for two large organizations to evaluate the efficacy and utility of SSeBP design theory to capture the realistic requirements and complex nuances of real inter-organizational business processes. Finally, we empirically evaluate SSeBP, against enhanced Use Cases (Siponen et al., 2006) and UML activity diagrams, for informational equivalence (Larkin and Simon, 1987) and its utility in generating situational awareness (Endsley, 1995) of the security and coordination requirements of a business process. Specific contributions of this dissertation are to develop a design theory (SSeBP) that presents a novel and holistic approach that contributes to the IS knowledge base by filling an existing research gap in the area of design of information systems to support secure and coordinated business processes. The proposed design theory provides practitioners with the meta-design and the design process, including the system components and principles to guide the analysis and design of secure eBusiness processes that are secure and coordinated

ECIS 2010 Panel Report: Humanities-Enriched Information Systems

This article builds on a panel on Humanities-Enriched Information Systems presented at the 2010 European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), held in Pretoria, South Africa, June 6–9, 2010. The aim of the panel discussion was to stimulate a meta-theoretical discussion about the relationship between the Humanities and Information Systems in a way opposite to the usual. A lot of research has been conducted on the application of computing in the Humanities, but this panel explored the reverse process of enrichment that takes place. The purpose was to give recognition to work that has already been done in this regard by means of identifying a substantial sub-discipline, but also to inspire more and deliberate research that explores ways to enhance Information Systems by interweaving insights and methods from the Humanities. Such an endeavor may enhance ICT to empower the communities using these technologies