Managing Knowledge For ESAR: An Ontology-Based Approach

Most organizations face difficult challenges in managing knowledge for crisis response, particularly in the context of emergency search and rescue (ESAR) initiatives. It is crucial for response effectiveness that such challenges be overcome.  Organizational members and numerous stakeholders must share the knowledge needed to plan for such eventualities.  They also must be able during a crisis to access relevant plans and communicate about their responses to it.  This paper examines the role and relevance of knowledge management ideals (using an ontology based approach) in support of crisis response, in general, and ESAR, in particular

Achieving Interoperability in E-government Services with two Modes of Semantic Bridging:

Abstract Data heterogeneity in the public sector is a serious problem and remains to be a key issue as different naming conventions are used to represent similar data labels. The e-government effort in many countries has provided a platform for government entities and their business partners to exchange data through Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and standards such as RosettaNet (B2B data exchange standard), EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport), XML (Extensible Markup Language) and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). However, e-government efforts have not really resolved data heterogeneity problems significantly due to limitation of these standards. One such limitation is the inability of data inheritance. In order to solve this problem with emphasis on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web Services, a semantically enriched web service for the public sector is needed. Thus we propose an ontology-based solution which allows data inheritance and polymorphism. This goal of this paper is to show how heterogeneous e-government documents can be semantically matched. We propose a shared hierarchical knowledge repository approach and a detailed process methodology for semantic mediation. A two-part semantic mediation approach using SRS (Semantic Relatedness Scores) and SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) is highlighted. Both measures are complimentary and provide the semantics necessary for resolving schema heterogeneity. Our approach incorporates a rule-based engine that reads and executes SWRL rules (i.e. RacerPro). We also adopted several tools for proof-of-concept such as Protégé (i.e. ontology editor) and JESS (Java Expert Shell System)

Making peer databases interact – A vision for an architecture supporting data coordination

Our goal in this paper is to study the problem of the interaction among databases in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. We propose a new approach, that we call “data (base) coordination”, that rejects the assumption, made for instance in data integration, that the involved databases act as if they were a single (virtual) database, modeled as a global schema. From an operational point of view, the distinguishing feature of data coordination is that many of the parameters (metadata) influencing the interaction among peer databases are decided at run time. For any given query, the involved databases interact using the most “appropriate” (virtual) schema. This is crucial for dealing with the strong dynamics of a P2P network. We provide four basic architectural notions and hint how they are the building blocks of a possible distributed implementation capable of coordinating databases in a P2P network

A BitTorrent-based peer-to-peer database server

Database systems have traditionally used a Client-Server architecture, where clients send queries to a database server. If the data proves popular, the server may become overloaded, leading to clients experiencing an increase in query response time. In the domain of file-sharing, the problem of server overloading has been successfully addressed by the use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) techniques in which users (peers) supply files – or pieces of files – to each other. This thesis will examine whether P2P techniques can be applied successfully in a database environment. It will introduce the Wigan Peer-to-Peer Database System, a P2P database system based on the popular BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. The potential benefits of a P2P database system include performance and scalability; allowing peers to answer each others’ queries will reduce the load on the database server and so could overcome the problem of a busy server becoming overloaded. Other potential benefits are fault tolerance and cost reduction. The Wigan architecture is introduced in this thesis, firstly by describing the BitTorrent algorithms and then by discussing how these algorithms must be modified for use in a database system. Experiments carried out on a simulator of Wigan are analysed in order to determine factors which affect its performance. These allow the identification of scenarios where Wigan could outperform a traditional database server. Further extensions to the Wigan architecture are discussed in this thesis, including possible means of handling data updates.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo