Semantic web-based document: editing and browsing in AktiveDoc

This paper presents a tool for supporting sharing and reuse of knowledge in document creation (writing) and use (reading). Semantic Web technologies are used to support the production of ontology based annotations while the document is written. Free text annotations (comments) can be added to integrate the knowledge in the document. In addition the tool uses external services (e.g. a Semantic Web harvester) to propose relevant content to writing user, enabling easy knowledge reuse. Similar facilities are provided for readers when their task does not coincide with the author’s one. The tool is specifically designed for Knowledge Management in organisations. In this paper we present and discuss how Semantic Web technologies are designed and integrated in the system

Using Semantic Web Technologies to Support Enhanced Situation Awareness

The AKTiveSA project is using Semantic Web technologies to support information fusion and enhanced situational awareness in a simulated humanitarian relief scenario. We have developed an application that shows how situational awareness can be supported during humanitarian relief situations; often occurring alongside military conflict. Semantic Web technologies provide new opportunities for harvesting information from numerous, disparate and often heterogeneous information sources and can be used to better support complex knowledge fusion

The Cognitive Atlas: Employing Interaction Design Processes to Facilitate Collaborative Ontology Creation

The Cognitive Atlas is a collaborative knowledge-building project that aims to develop an ontology that characterizes the current conceptual framework among researchers in cognitive science and neuroscience. The project objectives from the beginning focused on usability, simplicity, and utility for end users. Support for Semantic Web technologies was also a priority in order to support interoperability with other neuroscience projects and knowledge bases. Current off-the-shelf semantic web or semantic wiki technologies, however, do not often lend themselves to simple user interaction designs for non-technical researchers and practitioners; the abstract nature and complexity of these systems acts as point of friction for user interaction, inhibiting usability and utility. Instead, we take an alternate interaction design approach driven by user centered design processes rather than a base set of semantic technologies. This paper reviews the initial two rounds of design and development of the Cognitive Atlas system, including interactive design decisions and their implementation as guided by current industry practices for the development of complex interactive systems

Approaches to Semantic Web Services: An Overview and Comparison

Abstract. The next Web generation promises to deliver Semantic Web Services (SWS); services that are self-described and amenable to automated discovery, composition and invocation. A prerequisite to this, however, is the emergence and evolution of the Semantic Web, which provides the infrastructure for the semantic interoperability of Web Services. Web Services will be augmented with rich formal descriptions of their capabilities, such that they can be utilized by applications or other services without human assistance or highly constrained agreements on interfaces or protocols. Thus, Semantic Web Services have the potential to change the way knowledge and business services are consumed and provided on the Web. In this paper, we survey the state of the art of current enabling technologies for Semantic Web Services. In addition, we characterize the infrastructure of Semantic Web Services along three orthogonal dimensions: activities, architecture and service ontology. Further, we examine and contrast three current approaches to SWS according to the proposed dimensions

AKTive Food: Semantic Web based knowledge conduits for the Organic Food Industry

We present a vision and a proposal for using Semantic Web technologies in the organic food industry. This is a very knowledge intensive industry at every step from the producer, to the caterer or restauranteur, through to the consumer. There is a crucial need for a concept of environmental audit which would allow the various stake holders to know the full environmental impact of their economic choices. This is a different and parallel form of knowledge to that of price. Semantic Web technologies can be used effectively for the calculation and transfer of this type of knowledge (together with other forms of multimedia data) which could contribute considerably to the commercial and educational impact of the organic food industry. We outline how this could be achieved as our essential objective is to show how advanced technologies could be used to both reduce ecological impact and increase public awareness

RROVT: A Proposed Visualization Tool for Semantic Web Technologies

Visualization is the graphical or semi-graphical representation of information that aids human comprehension of and reasoning about that information. Visualization tools are critically important for creating, querying, visualizing and validating Semantic Web Data. Semantic Web, an efficient infrastructure that enhances visibility of knowledge on the web, is often used more specifically to refer to the formats and technologies that enable it. These technologies include RDF, RDFS and OWL. However, lack of robust and efficient tools to visualize, analyze and represent these technologies within time and space constraint remains a big challenge. In this study, semantic web technologies and their visualization tools were reviewed. RROVT (RDF, RDFS, OWL Visualization Tool), a tool to evaluate and represent formal description of concepts, terms and relationships of data models within a given knowledge domain as well as manage time and space complexities for publishing contents of the semantic web more efficiently is developed and proposed. Performance of RROVT was investigated on samples of semantic web documents implementing RDF, RDFS and OWL technologies. The proposed tool showed remarkable improvement over the existing tools as it aids a better comprehension of the syntax and semantics of semantic web technologies investigated in this study. Keywords: Semantic Web, Visualization Tool, Semantic Web Technologie

Knowledge society arguments revisited in the semantic technologies era

In the light of high profile governmental and international efforts to realise the knowledge society, I review the arguments made for and against it from a technology standpoint. I focus on advanced knowledge technologies with applications on a large scale and in open- ended environments like the World Wide Web and its ambitious extension, the Semantic Web. I argue for a greater role of social networks in a knowledge society and I explore the recent developments in mechanised trust, knowledge certification, and speculate on their blending with traditional societal institutions. These form the basis of a sketched roadmap for enabling technologies for a knowledge society

Knowledge modelling of emerging technologies for sustainable building development

In the quest for improved performance of buildings and mitigation of climate change, governments are encouraging the use of innovative sustainable building technologies. Consequently, there is now a large amount of information and knowledge on sustainable building technologies over the web. However, internet searches often overwhelm practitioners with millions of pages that they browse to identify suitable innovations to use on their projects. It has been widely acknowledged that the solution to this problem is the use of a machine-understandable language with rich semantics - the semantic web technology. This research investigates the extent to which semantic web technologies can be exploited to represent knowledge about sustainable building technologies, and to facilitate system decision-making in recommending appropriate choices for use in different situations. To achieve this aim, an exploratory study on sustainable building and semantic web technologies was conducted. This led to the use of two most popular knowledge engineering methodologies - the CommonKADS and "Ontology Development 101" in modelling knowledge about sustainable building technology and PV -system domains. A prototype system - Photo Voltaic Technology ONtology System (PV -TONS) - that employed sustainable building technology and PV -system domain knowledge models was developed and validated with a case study. While the sustainable building technology ontology and PV -TONS can both be used as generic knowledge models, PV -TONS is extended to include applications for the design and selection of PV -systems and components. Although its focus was on PV -systems, the application of semantic web technologies can be extended to cover other areas of sustainable building technologies. The major challenges encountered in this study are two-fold. First, many semantic web technologies are still under development and very unstable, thus hindering their full exploitation. Second, the lack of learning resources in this field steepen the learning curve and is a potential set-back in using semantic web technologies

Ontology-based semantic web services framework for knowledge management system

The latest Semantic Web developments and insights in knowledge management challenge the new era of semantic-based knowledge-management systems, where lies the new possibilities that Semantic Web affords for improved knowledge management. Connectivity and interoperability of knowledge management systems is the key to the vision of the future. We need a comprehensive framework that addresses main issues related to distributed Knowledge Management. Semantic Web Services (SWS) is the next major generation of the Web in which e-services and business communication become more knowledge-based. It proposes to extend the traditional Web Services technologies with its key enabling technologies of ontologies and semantics; to solve the problem of heterogeneity and interoperability of data across applications. This makes it possible to select, integrate and invocate services dynamically, which enable services to adapt themselves to changes without human intervention. The main purpose of this paper is to present the relevance of SWS technologies to KMS. Further, we discuss about the two major initiatives in SWS research. Later, we will propose ontology based semantic web services framework for KMS. Our focus is in the web service provider layer where we will introduce the three main components; knowledge manager, web service manager and ontology mapping manager

VPOET: Using a Distributed Collaborative Platform for Semantic Web Applications

This paper describes a distributed collaborative wiki-based platform that has been designed to facilitate the development of Semantic Web applications. The applications designed using this platform are able to build semantic data through the cooperation of different developers and to exploit that semantic data. The paper shows a practical case study on the application VPOET, and how an application based on Google Gadgets has been designed to test VPOET and let human users exploit the semantic data created. This practical example can be used to show how different Semantic Web technologies can be integrated into a particular Web application, and how the knowledge can be cooperatively improved.Comment: accepted for the 2nd International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing - IDC'2008. September 18-20, 2008, Catania, Ital