Official Knowledge: Validation Mechanisms for Knowledge Management Systems

One of the most important roles of a knowledge management system is as a filter to verify, authenticate, or justify the knowledge of an organization. The knowledge that passes this filter and is retained or otherwise deemed valuable by the system is official knowledge, the knowledge sanctioned by an organization. In this study, twenty-two articles that describe typologies of knowledge management systems were reviewed for their insights into knowledge validation. The articles were reviewed in the context of intellectual parentage with each article belonging to one of ten lines of inquiry spawning from five preeminent knowledge management articles. The results of this metastudy identify epistemology, knowledge transfer, the application environment, and the social process of sensemaking as valuable considerations for the design of validation mechanisms. A checklist of these considerations serves as the primary contribution of this study. Implications for future work in the design of validation mechanisms for knowledge management systems are discussed

Strong-AI Autoepistemic Robots Build on Intensional First Order Logic

Neuro-symbolic AI attempts to integrate neural and symbolic architectures in a manner that addresses strengths and weaknesses of each, in a complementary fashion, in order to support robust strong AI capable of reasoning, learning, and cognitive modeling. In this paper we consider the intensional First Order Logic (IFOL) as a symbolic architecture of modern robots, able to use natural languages to communicate with humans and to reason about their own knowledge with self-reference and abstraction language property. We intend to obtain the grounding of robot's language by experience of how it uses its neuronal architectures and hence by associating this experience with the mining (sense) of non-defined language concepts (particulars/individuals and universals) in PRP (Properties/Relations/Propositions) theory of IFOL.\\ We consider the robot's four-levels knowledge structure: The syntax level of particular natural language (Italian, French, etc..), two universal language levels: its semantic logic structure (based on virtual predicates of FOL and logic connectives), and its corresponding conceptual PRP structure level which universally represents the composite mining of FOL formulae grounded on the last robot's neuro-system level. Finally, we provide the general method how to implement in IFOL (by using the abstracted terms) different kinds of modal logic operators and their deductive axioms: we present a particular example of robots autoepistemic deduction capabilities by introduction of the special temporal $Konow$ predicate and deductive axioms for it: reflexive, positive introspection and distributive axiom.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figure

The Water Situation of the Future Mega City "Urumqi" (NW-China) – Resources, Risk, Conservation and Management

Urumqi is located in the remote center of the Eurasian continent. It is a future mega-city with rapid economic development and high population density in China's western interior. Urumqi's water resource problems are the main research objects in this thesis. Several models have been put forward to predict water demand in Urumqi and useful suggestions have been gathered to reduce water scarcity. In 2010, the average annual water resources of Urumqi were at 939.22 million m³ and the average per capita water resources were 387 m³, meaning that water resources are inadequate in Urumqi. The water consumption in Urumqi already exceeded the total amount of water resources. Furthermore, almost half of the wastewater is discharged directly into rivers and wasteland in Urumqi and as such, both surface water and groundwater are seriously polluted. Since there is also no reasonable water price system, the price of water is relative low which leads to weak awareness of water conservation. In addition, the high leakage rate of the pipe network and the backward technology of agricultural irrigation have resulted in serious water losses. In order to alleviate the scarcity of water resources and instead increase the number of resources, while at the same time improving water quality, wastewater in Urumqi and how it is reused of Urumqi was analyzed. Some suggestions about Urumqi's sewage and water reuse system were put forward. Moreover, various water scarcity assessment indexes were used to evaluate the water scarcity risk in Urumqi. Based on the results of a water scarcity risk assessment, the water scarcity decision model was built up by adopting the advanced Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology. The measures to reduce water scarcity include a.o. adjusting industrial structures, water conservation, using unconventional water resources, implementing economic regulation measures, controlling environmental safety, improving urban functions, and the interbasin transfer of water. According to the results of the analysis of water scarcity decisions, major solutions to resolve the problem of water scarcity were identified, with water conservation as the most important step in reducing water scarcity in Urumqi. In addition, a water conservation index system was set up based on the water-saving evaluation standard in China to change the present situation of serious wastage of water resources in Urumqi. This index system can be used to reflect the problems (e.g. high leakage rate of the water supply pipe network, low water price, low conveyance efficiency of irrigation canal system, low rate of recycled industrial water and water conservation awareness) and the potentials of water conversation in each sector (agriculture, industry and domestic). The results of the index system show that there is a large potential of agricultural water conservation, and it can be achieved by several measures, such as improving the water efficiency of the canal system, promoting the usage of advanced water conservation irrigation techniques and increasing the water price for agricultural irrigation. In addition, the "quota method" and the "grey model" (used to analyze the system, which related to time includes both certain and uncertain information) were used to predict water demand. The "quota method" predicts the water demand based on indicators of socioeconomic development and the water use quota in each sector. The "grey model" was constructed according to the time series of agricultural, industrial, domestic and total water consumption in Urumqi from 2003 to 2010 by creating a sequence of first-order accumulated generating operation and differential equations. The predictions that were calculated by using the grey model show that agriculture will still be the biggest user of water in 2015. Therefore, changing the agricultural system and improving the efficiency of agricultural water use are the best ways to realize the rational allocation and sustainable use of water resources in Urumqi. In order to effectively manage Urumqi's water resources and to integrate the water demand prediction model and the water scarcity decision model, the water resources management and information system for Urumqi was built up by using various technologies (database, Web and GIS server). This system not only reflects the current situation of Urumqi's water resources but also helps users to make decisions for reducing water scarcity

Integrating driving forces into the development of Adaptive Virtual Organizations

Organizations have become the backbone of the society. Humans live around all kinds of organizations, such as neighborhood communities, businesses, schools, unions, political, sports, and religious organizations, etc. These organizations have a set of members, each playing a specific role, which determines their duties and functionalities within the organization. One of these functionalities is to offer a range of services to members of the organization and external people. These members must follow a set of norms to ensure the proper functioning of the organization and should pursue the global goals of the organization. A feature that is repeated in organizations is that they are not static but dynamic, resulting in changes in both its structure and the way in which they behave. In an organization, any of its elements is prone to change due to situations that occur in the organization itself or its environment. Researchers in the field of social sciences and organizations have studied such situations, the reasons why they appear and solutions and actions to be taken to ensure that this situation does not damage the organization or to take advantage of the situation. These situations are known as ‘Forces that drive organizational change’. Human organizations are the main source of inspiration for the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) based on organizations. These systems are computational abstractions that are populated by agents instead of people, but take into account organizational elements such as roles, services, goals, norms, etc. However, the proposals that have been presented up to now to define this type of MAS are focused mostly on static systems, without changes in its structure. Moreover, in the few proposals that take into account organizational changes, they just state that changes occur, but without specifying the reason for change. Thus, the concept of ‘forces that drive organizational change’ (and their features) is not considered. Therefore, the objective of this PhD thesis is to translate the knowledge of the forces that drive organizational change available in human organizations to MASbased organizations. These forces will be formally expressed with the factors that help to detect them. The solutions to be taken when a force is detected will also be presented. To correctly perform this task, a formalization for virtual organizations is designed, named Virtual Organization Formalization (VOF). Moreover, the Artifacts for Organizational Mechanisms are proposed, which are a tool to help in the representation of organizational knowledge and in the modeling of the environment of the organization. This tool is based on the Agents & Artifacts (A&A) framework.Esparcia García, S. (2015). Integrating driving forces into the development of Adaptive Virtual Organizations [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/48538TESI

Ontological foundations for structural conceptual models

In this thesis, we aim at contributing to the theory of conceptual modeling and ontology representation. Our main objective here is to provide ontological foundations for the most fundamental concepts in conceptual modeling. These foundations comprise a number of ontological theories, which are built on established work on philosophical ontology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of language and linguistics. Together these theories amount to a system of categories and formal relations known as a foundational ontolog