An Agent Approach to Spatial Information Grid Architecture Design

Spatial information grid (SIG) is a spatial information infrastructure that has the capability of providing services on-demand. SIG is a distributed network environment, which links spatial data resources, computing resources, storage resources, software, tools and users. SIG can integrate massive distributed heterogeneous spatial information resources, provides uniform management and process, and, furthermore, coordinate different resources to complete large-scale and complex spatial tasks and applications. In this paper, agent technology is adopted to construct a SIG framework, which contains three layers: users/applications layer, agent services layer and information layer. Different applications can get their spatial information via agent services, and agent services make the procedure of navigating and accessing spatial information transparent to users. Also, the implementation issues of the framework are discussed in detail, including Geo-Agents, an agent-based distributed GIS system, spatial information management, collaboration and parallel mechanism, load control strategy, and a sample

Interoperable intelligent environmental decision support systems: a framework proposal

In this paper, an approach for the development of Interoperable Intelligent Environmental Decision Support Systems (IEDSS) is proposed. The framework is based upon the cognitive-oriented approach for the development of IEDSS proposed in (Sànchez-Marrè et al., 2008), where three kind of tasks must be built: analysis tasks, synthesis tasks and prognosis tasks. Now, a fourth level will be proposed: the model construction layer, which is normally an off-line task. At each level, interoperability should be possible and inter-level interoperability must be als o achieved. This interoperability is proposed to be obtained using data interchange protocols like Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML), which is a model interc hange protocol based on XML language, using an ontology of data and AI models to characterize data types and AI models and to set-up a common terminology, and using workflows of the whole interoperation scheme. In the future, a Multi-Agent System will be used to implement the software components. An example of use of the pro posed methodology applied to the supervision of a Wastewater Treatment Plant is provided. This Interoperable IEDSS framework will be the first step to an actual interoperability of AI models which will make IEDSS more reliable and accurate to solve complex environmental problems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Viewpoints on emergent semantics

Authors include:Philippe Cudr´e-Mauroux, and Karl Aberer (editors), Alia I. Abdelmoty, Tiziana Catarci, Ernesto Damiani, Arantxa Illaramendi, Robert Meersman, Erich J. Neuhold, Christine Parent, Kai-Uwe Sattler, Monica Scannapieco, Stefano Spaccapietra, Peter Spyns, and Guy De Tr´eWe introduce a novel view on how to deal with the problems of semantic interoperability in distributed systems. This view is based on the concept of emergent semantics, which sees both the representation of semantics and the discovery of the proper interpretation of symbols as the result of a self-organizing process performed by distributed agents exchanging symbols and having utilities dependent on the proper interpretation of the symbols. This is a complex systems perspective on the problem of dealing with semantics. We highlight some of the distinctive features of our vision and point out preliminary examples of its applicatio

A Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Urban Economic Analysis and Spatial Decision-Making

abstract: Urban economic modeling and effective spatial planning are critical tools towards achieving urban sustainability. However, in practice, many technical obstacles, such as information islands, poor documentation of data and lack of software platforms to facilitate virtual collaboration, are challenging the effectiveness of decision-making processes. In this paper, we report on our efforts to design and develop a geospatial cyberinfrastructure (GCI) for urban economic analysis and simulation. This GCI provides an operational graphic user interface, built upon a service-oriented architecture to allow (1) widespread sharing and seamless integration of distributed geospatial data; (2) an effective way to address the uncertainty and positional errors encountered in fusing data from diverse sources; (3) the decomposition of complex planning questions into atomic spatial analysis tasks and the generation of a web service chain to tackle such complex problems; and (4) capturing and representing provenance of geospatial data to trace its flow in the modeling task. The Greater Los Angeles Region serves as the test bed. We expect this work to contribute to effective spatial policy analysis and decision-making through the adoption of advanced GCI and to broaden the application coverage of GCI to include urban economic simulations

Exploiting Deep Semantics and Compositionality of Natural Language for Human-Robot-Interaction

We develop a natural language interface for human robot interaction that implements reasoning about deep semantics in natural language. To realize the required deep analysis, we employ methods from cognitive linguistics, namely the modular and compositional framework of Embodied Construction Grammar (ECG) [Feldman, 2009]. Using ECG, robots are able to solve fine-grained reference resolution problems and other issues related to deep semantics and compositionality of natural language. This also includes verbal interaction with humans to clarify commands and queries that are too ambiguous to be executed safely. We implement our NLU framework as a ROS package and present proof-of-concept scenarios with different robots, as well as a survey on the state of the art

A Bandwidth-Conserving Architecture for Crawling Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit via avatars. Content in virtual worlds such as Second Life or OpenSimulator is increasingly presented using three-dimensional (3D) dynamic presentation technologies that challenge traditional search technologies. As 3D environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, the need for a data crawler and distributed search service will continue to grow. By increasing the visibility of content across virtual world servers in order to better collect and integrate the 3D data we can also improve the crawling and searching efficiency and accuracy by avoiding crawling unchanged regions or downloading unmodified objects that already exist in our collection. This will help to save bandwidth resources and Internet traffic during the content collection and indexing and, for a fixed amount of bandwidth, maximize the freshness of the collection. This work presents a new services paradigm for virtual world crawler interaction that is co-operative and exploits information about 3D objects in the virtual world. Our approach supports analyzing redundant information crawled from virtual worlds in order to decrease the amount of data collected by crawlers, keep search engine collections up to date, and provide an efficient mechanism for collecting and searching information from multiple virtual worlds. Experimental results with data crawled from Second Life servers demonstrate that our approach provides the ability to save crawling bandwidth consumption, to explore more hidden objects and new regions to be crawled that facilitate the search service in virtual worlds

A novel context ontology to facilitate interoperation of semantic services in environments with wearable devices

The LifeWear-Mobilized Lifestyle with Wearables (Lifewear) project attempts to create Ambient Intelligence (AmI) ecosystems by composing personalized services based on the user information, environmental conditions and reasoning outputs. Two of the most important benefits over traditional environments are 1) take advantage of wearable devices to get user information in a nonintrusive way and 2) integrate this information with other intelligent services and environmental sensors. This paper proposes a new ontology composed by the integration of users and services information, for semantically representing this information. Using an Enterprise Service Bus, this ontology is integrated in a semantic middleware to provide context-aware personalized and semantically annotated services, with discovery, composition and orchestration tasks. We show how these services support a real scenario proposed in the Lifewear project

The INCF Digital Atlasing Program: Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain

The goal of the INCF Digital Atlasing Program is to provide the vision and direction necessary to make the rapidly growing collection of multidimensional data of the rodent brain (images, gene expression, etc.) widely accessible and usable to the international research community. This Digital Brain Atlasing Standards Task Force was formed in May 2008 to investigate the state of rodent brain digital atlasing, and formulate standards, guidelines, and policy recommendations.

Our first objective has been the preparation of a detailed document that includes the vision and specific description of an infrastructure, systems and methods capable of serving the scientific goals of the community, as well as practical issues for achieving
the goals. This report builds on the 1st INCF Workshop on Mouse and Rat Brain Digital Atlasing Systems (Boline et al., 2007, _Nature Preceedings_, doi:10.1038/npre.2007.1046.1) and includes a more detailed analysis of both the current state and desired state of digital atlasing along with specific recommendations for achieving these goals

Exploiting Semantic Technologies in Smart Environments and Grids: Emerging Roles and Case Studies

Semantic technologies are currently spreading across several application domains as a reliable and consistent mean to address challenges related to organization, manipulation, visualization and exchange of data and knowledge. Different roles are actually played by these techniques depending on the application domain, on the timing constraints, on the distributed nature of applications, and so on. This paper provides an overview of the roles played by semantic technologies in the domain of smart grids and smart environments, with a particular focus on changes brought by such technologies in the adopted architectures, programming techniques and tools. Motivations driving the adoption of semantics in these different, but strictly intertwined, fields are introduced using a strong application-driven perspective. Two real-world case studies in smart grids and smart environments are presented to exemplify the roles covered by such technologies and the changes they fostered in software engineering processes. Learned lessons are then distilled and future adoption scenarios discussed