Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Supporting conceptualisation processes in collaborative networks: a case study on an R&D project

The development of new products or processes involves the creation, re-creation and integration of conceptual models from the related scientific and technical domains. Particularly, in the context of collaborative networks of organisations (CNO) (e.g. a multi-partner, international project) such developments can be seriously hindered by conceptual misunderstandings and misalignments, resulting from participants with different backgrounds or organisational cultures, for example. The research described in this article addresses this problem by proposing a method and the tools to support the collaborative development of shared conceptualisations in the context of a collaborative network of organisations. The theoretical model is based on a socio-semantic perspective, while the method is inspired by the conceptual integration theory from the cognitive semantics field. The modelling environment is built upon a semantic wiki platform. The majority of the article is devoted to developing an informal ontology in the context of a European R&D project, studied using action research. The case study results validated the logical structure of the method and showed the utility of the method

Integration via Meaning: Using the Semantic Web to deliver Web Services

Presented at the CRIS2002 Conference in Kassel.-- 9 pages.-- Contains: Conference paper (PDF) + PPT presentation.The major developments of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the last two years have been Web Services and the Semantic Web. The former allows the construction of distributed systems across the WWW by providing a lightweight middleware architecture. The latter provides an infrastructure for accessing resources on the WWW via their relationships with respect to conceptual descriptions. In this paper, I shall review the progress undertaken in each of these two areas. Further, I shall argue that in order for the aims of both the Semantic Web and the Web Services activities to be successful, then the Web Service architecture needs to be augmented by concepts and tools of the Semantic Web. This infrastructure will allow resource discovery, brokering and access to be enabled in a standardised, integrated and interoperable manner. Finally, I survey the CLRC Information Technology R&D programme to show how it is contributing to the development of this future infrastructure

A Cooperative Approach for Composite Ontology Matching

Ontologies have proven to be an essential element in a range of applications in which knowl-edge plays a key role. Resolving the semantic heterogeneity problem is crucial to allow the interoperability between ontology-based systems. This makes automatic ontology matching, as an anticipated solution to semantic heterogeneity, an important, research issue. Many dif-ferent approaches to the matching problem have emerged from the literature. An important issue of ontology matching is to find effective ways of choosing among many techniques and their variations, and then combining their results. An innovative and promising option is to formalize the combination of matching techniques using agent-based approaches, such as cooperative negotiation and argumentation. In this thesis, the formalization of the on-tology matching problem following an agent-based approach is proposed. Such proposal is evaluated using state-of-the-art data sets. The results show that the consensus obtained by negotiation and argumentation represent intermediary values which are closer to the best matcher. As the best matcher may vary depending on specific differences of multiple data sets, cooperative approaches are an advantage. *** RESUMO - Ontologias são elementos essenciais em sistemas baseados em conhecimento. Resolver o problema de heterogeneidade semântica é fundamental para permitira interoperabilidade entre sistemas baseados em ontologias. Mapeamento automático de ontologias pode ser visto como uma solução para esse problema. Diferentes e complementares abordagens para o problema são propostas na literatura. Um aspecto importante em mapeamento consiste em selecionar o conjunto adequado de abordagens e suas variações, e então combinar seus resultados. Uma opção promissora envolve formalizara combinação de técnicas de ma-peamento usando abordagens baseadas em agentes cooperativos, tais como negociação e argumentação. Nesta tese, a formalização do problema de combinação de técnicas de ma-peamento usando tais abordagens é proposta e avaliada. A avaliação, que envolve conjuntos de testes sugeridos pela comunidade científica, permite concluir que o consenso obtido pela negociação e pela argumentação não é exatamente a melhoria de todos os resultados individuais, mas representa os valores intermediários que são próximo da melhor técnica. Considerando que a melhor técnica pode variar dependendo de diferencas específicas de múltiplas bases de dados, abordagens cooperativas são uma vantagem

Towards automated knowledge-based mapping between individual conceptualisations to empower personalisation of Geospatial Semantic Web

Geospatial domain is characterised by vagueness, especially in the semantic disambiguation of the concepts in the domain, which makes defining universally accepted geo- ontology an onerous task. This is compounded by the lack of appropriate methods and techniques where the individual semantic conceptualisations can be captured and compared to each other. With multiple user conceptualisations, efforts towards a reliable Geospatial Semantic Web, therefore, require personalisation where user diversity can be incorporated. The work presented in this paper is part of our ongoing research on applying commonsense reasoning to elicit and maintain models that represent users' conceptualisations. Such user models will enable taking into account the users' perspective of the real world and will empower personalisation algorithms for the Semantic Web. Intelligent information processing over the Semantic Web can be achieved if different conceptualisations can be integrated in a semantic environment and mismatches between different conceptualisations can be outlined. In this paper, a formal approach for detecting mismatches between a user's and an expert's conceptual model is outlined. The formalisation is used as the basis to develop algorithms to compare models defined in OWL. The algorithms are illustrated in a geographical domain using concepts from the SPACE ontology developed as part of the SWEET suite of ontologies for the Semantic Web by NASA, and are evaluated by comparing test cases of possible user misconceptions

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Conceptualising the geographic world: the dimensions of negotiation in crowdsourced cartography

In crowdsourced cartographic projects, mappers coordinate their efforts through online tools to produce digital geospatial artefacts, such as maps and gazetteers, which were once the exclusive territory of professional surveyors and cartographers. In order to produce meaningful and coherent data, contributors need to negotiate a shared conceptualisation that defines the domain concepts, such as road, building, train station, forest, and lake, enabling the communi- cation of geographic knowledge. Considering the OpenStreetMap Wiki website as a case study, this article investigates the nature of this negotiation, driven by a small group of mappers in a context of high contribution inequality. De- spite the apparent consensus on the conceptualisation, the negotiation keeps unfolding in a tension between alternative representations, which are often in- commensurable, i.e., hard to integrate and reconcile. In this study, we identify six complementary dimensions of incommensurability that recur in the nego- tiation: (i) ontology, (ii) cartography, (iii) culture and language, (iv) lexical definitions, (v) granularity, and (vi) semantic overload and duplication

Ontology-based services for agents interoperability

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2006. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port