An Analysis of Service Ontologies

Services are increasingly shaping the world’s economic activity. Service provision and consumption have been profiting from advances in ICT, but the decentralization and heterogeneity of the involved service entities still pose engineering challenges. One of these challenges is to achieve semantic interoperability among these autonomous entities. Semantic web technology aims at addressing this challenge on a large scale, and has matured over the last years. This is evident from the various efforts reported in the literature in which service knowledge is represented in terms of ontologies developed either in individual research projects or in standardization bodies. This paper aims at analyzing the most relevant service ontologies available today for their suitability to cope with the service semantic interoperability challenge. We take the vision of the Internet of Services (IoS) as our motivation to identify the requirements for service ontologies. We adopt a formal approach to ontology design and evaluation in our analysis. We start by defining informal competency questions derived from a motivating scenario, and we identify relevant concepts and properties in service ontologies that match the formal ontological representation of these questions. We analyze the service ontologies with our concepts and questions, so that each ontology is positioned and evaluated according to its utility. The gaps we identify as the result of our analysis provide an indication of open challenges and future work

Enriching videos with light semantics

This paper describes an ongoing prototypical framework to annotate and retrieve web videos with light semantics. The proposed framework reuses many existing vocabularies along with a video model. The knowledge is captured from three different information spaces (media content, context, document). We also describe ways to extract the semantic content descriptions from the existing usergenerated content using multiple approaches of linguistic processing and Named Entity Recognition, which are later identified with DBpedia resources to establish meanings for the tags. Finally, the implemented prototype is described with multiple search interfaces and retrieval processes. Evaluation on semantic enrichment shows a considerable (50% of videos) improvement in content description

A conceptual model for the development of CSCW systems

Models and theories concerning cooperation have long been recognised as an important aid in the development of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems. However, there is no consensus regarding the set of concepts and abstractions that should underlie such models and theories. Furthermore, common patterns are hard to discern in different models and theories. This paper analyses a number of existing models and theories, and proposes a generic conceptual framework based on the strengths and commonalities of these models. We analyse five different developments, viz., Coordination Theory, Activity Theory, Task Manager model, Action/Interaction Theory and Object-Oriented Activity Support model, to propose a generic model based on four key concepts common to these developments, viz. activity, actor, information and service

An industry in crisis : risk, reflexivity, sub-politics and accountability processes in salmon farming

This paper draws upon an arena study on the accounting and accountability processes used within a business sector, under intense public and regulatory scrutiny in terms of its social, economic and ecological risks. Georgakopoulos and Thomson (2004, 2005) report on an absence of environmental accounting within the salmon farming organizations for management planning and control processes. This paper extends this analysis by attempting to theorise the social and environmental accounting observed by these organizations discharging these accountability duties using insights from the risk society literature. The interviews and documentary analysis revealed the existence of an active accountability network. However, Social and Environmental Accounting techniques did not feature in the engagement processes. We observed the existence of fragmented accountability networks, and evidence of a struggle for domination of a techno-scientific accountability process. Within these discourses, business and cost issues were evident, but they were not formally quantified or systematically integrated. We find that the accountability processes observed in our arena study, were consistent with Beck's (and others) analysis of reflexive modernity and the Risk Society Thesis This paper by evaluating accounting and accountability processes within a specific context, demonstrates the importance of locating social and environmental accounting processes within wider accountability discourses. These societal accountability discourses extend beyond social and environmental as well as conventional accounting practices. It is suggested that all accounting practices should become more reflexive in nature if they are to remain relevant in these wider societal accountability discourses

A framework for effective management of condition based maintenance programs in the context of industrial development of E-Maintenance strategies

CBM (Condition Based Maintenance) solutions are increasingly present in industrial systems due to two main circumstances: rapid evolution, without precedents, in the capture and analysis of data and significant cost reduction of supporting technologies. CBM programs in industrial systems can become extremely complex, especially when considering the effective introduction of new capabilities provided by PHM (Prognostics and Health Management) and E-maintenance disciplines. In this scenario, any CBM solution involves the management of numerous technical aspects, that the maintenance manager needs to understand, in order to be implemented properly and effectively, according to the company’s strategy. This paper provides a comprehensive representation of the key components of a generic CBM solution, this is presented using a framework or supporting structure for an effective management of the CBM programs. The concept “symptom of failure”, its corresponding analysis techniques (introduced by ISO 13379-1 and linked with RCM/FMEA analysis), and other international standard for CBM open-software application development (for instance, ISO 13374 and OSA-CBM), are used in the paper for the development of the framework. An original template has been developed, adopting the formal structure of RCM analysis templates, to integrate the information of the PHM techniques used to capture the failure mode behaviour and to manage maintenance. Finally, a case study describes the framework using the referred template.Gobierno de Andalucía P11-TEP-7303 M

A framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry

This paper presents a framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry. The aim of this approach is to strengthen the modularity and reuse of engineering design ontologies to support knowledge management initiatives within the aerospace industry. Successful development and effective utilisation of engineering ontologies strongly depends on the method/framework used to develop them. Ensuring modularity in ontology design is essential for engineering design activities due to the complexity of knowledge that is required to be brought together to support the product design decision-making process. The proposed approach adopts best practices from previous ontology development methods, but focuses on encouraging modular architectural ontology design. The framework is comprised of three phases namely: (1) Ontology design and development; (2) Ontology validation and (3) Implementation of ontology structure. A qualitative research methodology is employed which is composed of four phases. The first phase defines the capture of knowledge required for the framework development, followed by the ontology framework development, iterative refinement of engineering ontologies and ontology validation through case studies and experts’ opinion. The ontology-based framework is applied in the combustor and casing aerospace engineering domain. The modular ontologies developed as a result of applying the framework and are used in a case study to restructure and improve the accessibility of information on a product design information-sharing platform. Additionally, domain experts within the aerospace industry validated the strengths, benefits and limitations of the framework. Due to the modular nature of the developed ontologies, they were also employed to support other project initiatives within the case study company such as role-based computing (RBC), IT modernisation activity and knowledge management implementation across the sponsoring organisation. The major benefit of this approach is in the reduction of man-hours required for maintaining engineering design ontologies. Furthermore, this approach strengthens reuse of ontology knowledge and encourages modularity in the design and development of engineering ontologies

Should comprehensive diagnosis include idiographic understanding?

The World Psychiatric Association has emphasised the importance of idiographic understanding as a distinct component of comprehensive assessment but in introductions to the idea it is often assimilated to the notion of narrative judgement. This paper aims to distinguish between supposed idiographic and narrative judgement. Taking the former to mean a kind of individualised judgement, I argue that it has no place in psychiatry in part because it threatens psychiatric validity. Narrative judgement, by contrast, is a genuinely distinct complement to criteriological diagnosis but it is, nevertheless, a special kind of general judgement and thus can possess validity. To argue this I first examine the origin of the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic in Windelband's 1894 rectorial address. I argue that none of three ways of understanding that distinction is tenable. Windelband's description of historical methods, as a practical example, does not articulate a genuine form of understanding. A metaphysical distinction between particulars and general kinds is guilty of subscribing to the Myth of the Given. A distinction based on an abstraction of essentially combined aspects of empirical judgement cannot underpin a distinct empirical method. Furthermore, idiographic elements understood as individualised judgements threaten the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. In the final part I briefly describe some aspects of the logic of narrative judgements and argue that in the call for comprehensive diagnosis, narrative rather than idiographic elements have an important role. Importantly, however, whilst directed towards individual subjects, narratives are framed in intrinsically general concepts and thus can aspire to validity