Integrating Knowledge Modelling in Business Process Management

In this paper we present a new approach for integrating Business Process Management and Knowledge Management. We focus on the modelling of weakly-structured knowledge-intensive business processes. We develop a framework for modelling this type of processes that explicitly considers knowledge-related tasks and knowledge objects and present a workflow tool that is an implementation of our theoretical meta-model. As an example, we sketch one case study, the process for granting full old age pension as it is performed in the Greek Social Security Institution. Finally we briefly describe some related approaches and compare them to our work and draw the main conclusions and further research directions

RichWPS Orchestration Environment for Geo Services

Mini-Symposium: Data Management in Hydro-Engineerin

Techniques for organizational memory information systems

The KnowMore project aims at providing active support to humans working on knowledge-intensive tasks. To this end the knowledge available in the modeled business processes or their incarnations in specific workflows shall be used to improve information handling. We present a representation formalism for knowledge-intensive tasks and the specification of its object-oriented realization. An operational semantics is sketched by specifying the basic functionality of the Knowledge Agent which works on the knowledge intensive task representation. The Knowledge Agent uses a meta-level description of all information sources available in the Organizational Memory. We discuss the main dimensions that such a description scheme must be designed along, namely information content, structure, and context. On top of relational database management systems, we basically realize deductive object- oriented modeling with a comfortable annotation facility. The concrete knowledge descriptions are obtained by configuring the generic formalism with ontologies which describe the required modeling dimensions. To support the access to documents, data, and formal knowledge in an Organizational Memory an integrated domain ontology and thesaurus is proposed which can be constructed semi-automatically by combining document-analysis and knowledge engineering methods. Thereby the costs for up-front knowledge engineering and the need to consult domain experts can be considerably reduced. We present an automatic thesaurus generation tool and show how it can be applied to build and enhance an integrated ontology /thesaurus. A first evaluation shows that the proposed method does indeed facilitate knowledge acquisition and maintenance of an organizational memory

SmartRegio – Employing Spatial Data to Provide Decision Support for SMEs and City Administrations

When decisions have to be made which are based on the characteristics and expected developments in specific spatial environments (such as finding the best place for a new production site or for a new shop), geo data and the information that can be derived from it plays a crucial role. While larger companies typically can afford the setup of the required organisational units as well as the access to relevant data from commercial providers, smaller organisations such as SMEs or city administrations are at a disadvantage. The aim of the SmartRegio project was to develop solutions for such organisations that combine freely available (mass) spatial data from many different sources as a decision-making basis focusing on governmental and private actors operating with a focus on a specific region. The data sources include data from infrastructures like energy and mobility, data from public entities, and also data from social media and media channels. The SmartRegio project successfully identified and tackled major technical and legal challenges when aiming to exploit such data, while at the same time realising a generic infrastructure that supports the required processes within the given context

Integration Of Water Supply Distribution Systems By Using Interoperable Standards To Make Effective Decisions

This paper aims at presenting current standards used and their implementation to integrate different decision making tools spread throughout the Water Supply Distribution Chain. Nowadays in Europe the water supply distribution managers use many tools to perform their decisional processes and multiple data sources to aid in decision making which are totally unconnected and use different communication languages. The data and protocols heterogeneity provides a lack of fluidity in communications between the tools, and in many cases non-existent. An architectural proposal, which uses hydrologic standards, with the aim to offer a common way to interconnect existing tools and data to provide an easy way to take better and effective decisions, is proposed in this paper. To achieve the goal, tasks such as the identification and analysis of the different standards and protocols that are currently present in the water world have been reviewed focusing in the OGC standards as main target. Moreover, the current tools used for decision making in the water supply distribution approaches have been identified and analysed to detect the key issues for their integration through these standards. Furthermore, a background of water supply distribution chain systems, interoperability and standards in hydrological systems are also summarized. Finally, the paper presents the work done showing that OGC standards such as OGC WPS, OGC WMS, OGC WFS, OGC SOS, WaterML2 should be used to create an open interface which permits integrate different building blocks such as demand management systems, decision support systems and others in a common framework. This paper will also observe work done so far in WatERP EU\u27s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) project