ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The vision of the semantic web is to unleash the next generation of information sharing and interoperability by encoding meaning into the symbols that are used to describe various computational capabilities within the World Wide Web or other networks. This paper describes the application of semantic web technologies to Test and Evaluation (T&E) metadata verification and validation. Verification is a quality process that is used to evaluate whether or not a product, service, or system complies with a regulation, specification, or conditions imposed at the start of a development phase or which exists in the organization. Validation is the process of establishing documented evidence that provides a high degree of assurance that a product, service, or system accomplishes its intended requirements. While this often involves acceptance and suitability with external customers, automation provides significant assistance to the customers.

DL-based ontologies have been widely used as knowledge infrastructures in knowledge management systems and on the Semantic Web. The development of efficient, sound and complete reasoning technologies has been a central topic in DL research. Recently, the paradigm shift from professional to novice users, and from standalone and static to inter-linked and dynamic applications raises new challenges: Can users build and evolve ontologies, both static and dynamic, with features provided by expressive DLs, while still enjoying e cient reasoning as in tractable DLs, without worrying too much about the quality (soundness and completeness) of results? To answer these challenges, this thesis investigates the problem of tractable and quality-guaranteed reasoning for ontologies in expressive DLs. The thesis develops syntactic approximation, a consequence-based reasoning procedure with worst-case PTime complexity, theoretically sound and empirically high-recall results, for ontologies constructed in DLs more expressive than any tractable DL. The thesis shows that a set of semantic completeness-guarantee conditions can be identifed to efficiently check if such a procedure is complete. Many ontologies tested in the thesis, including difficult ones for an off-the-shelf reasoner, satisfy such conditions. Furthermore, the thesis presents a stream reasoning mechanism to update reasoning results on dynamic ontologies without complete re-computation. Such a mechanism implements the Delete-and-Re-derive strategy with a truth maintenance system, and can help to reduce unnecessary over-deletion and re-derivation in stream reasoning and to improve its efficiency. As a whole, the thesis develops a worst-case tractable, guaranteed sound, conditionally complete and empirically high-recall reasoning solution for both static and dynamic ontologies in expressive DLs. Some techniques presented in the thesis can also be used to improve the performance and/or completeness of other existing reasoning solutions. The results can further be generalised and extended to support a wider range of knowledge representation formalisms, especially when a consequence-based algorithm is available.

Τα τελευταία χρόνια γίνεται ολοένα όλο και πιο έντονη η επιθυμία, τόσο από εκπαιδευτικούς ή μαθητές, αλλά και από άτομα μεγαλύτερης ηλικίας που θέλουν να αναπτύξουν την γνώση τους σε κάποιο αντικείμενο, για την δημιουργία εκπαιδευτικών μηχανών (λογισμικών) που θα μπορούν να αντικαταστήσουν σε μεγάλο βαθμό τον ρόλο του εκπαιδευτικού. Η προστιθέμενη αξία ενός εκπαιδευτικού λογισμικού θα μπορούσε να είναι η εύκολη πρόσβαση σε μεγάλο όγκο πληροφοριών, η πιο συστηματική εκμάθηση, καθώς και η εξοικονόμηση χρόνου και εκπαιδευτικών πηγών (εννοώντας τους εκπαιδευτικούς ως φυσικά πρόσωπα). Το ζητούμενο δεν είναι απλά η δημιουργία ενός εκπαιδευτικού λογισμικού αλλά ενός "σωστά" δομημένου εκπαιδευτικού συστήματος. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι ο εκπαιδευόμενος θα μπορεί να αντλεί σωστά και μεθοδικά πληροφορία από αυτό, όπως ακριβώς θα έκανε αν είχε στην διάθεσή του έναν καταρτισμένο εκπαιδευτικό. Στην παρούσα λοιπόν εργασία, μέσα από ένας συνδυασμό νέων τεχνολογιών όπως είναι αυτή των οντολογιών και του σημασιολογικού ιστού καθώς επίσης και θεωριών συσχετιζόμενων με την εκπαίδευση, παρουσιάζονται τα βήματα για δημιουργία ενός διαδραστικού crowdsoursing εκπαιδευτικού συστήματος. Παρουσιάζεται ένα σύστημα που με απλά λόγια θα είναι σε θέση να εξυπηρετεί μαθητές και εκπαιδευτικούς αλλά και οποιονδήποτε άλλο ενδιαφερόμενο, να προσφέρει μεθοδική εκμάθηση, να συλλέγει πληροφορία από τους χρήστες του την οποία να επεξεργάζεται και να την διαθέτει σε αυτούς σε ξανά βελτιωμένη και εμπλουτισμένη. / -

為了確保個人資料的隱私，本研究期望可以建構一個在主從式架構的環境中，利用語意網技術來改善現有的個人隱私偏好平臺(P3P)。透過語意網中的本體論和規則的加入希望可以提昇個人隱私偏好平臺的正規語意，來實現具有語意的個人隱私保護規範架構，確保使用者不會有解讀錯誤的情況發生，讓網站的資料使用規範，可以更符合使用者的意圖，讓原本使用者需仔細詳讀的隱私規範書，可以透過一簡單的協議過程去加以簡化閱讀隱私規範書的步驟。 / In this study I’m going to build an environment with client-server architecture and utilize Semantic Web Technology to improve the existing platform for privacy preferences (P3P) in order to ensure the privacy of personal information. With the ontology and rules of Semantic Web hopefully it will upgrade personal privacy preferences formal semantics to achieve the semantic of personal privacy protection framework to ensure that users will not misunderstand. The usage of web site information can be more in line with the user's intentions, so that the original user were required to carefully read the privacy specification can be implemented through a simple process which simplified the steps of reading privacy specification.

This thesis presents a framework for semantic Web Service discovery using descriptive (non-functional) service characteristics in a large-scale, multi-domain setting. The framework uses Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) to design a template for describing non-functional service parameters in a way that facilitates service discovery, and presents a layered scheme for organizing ontologies used in service description. This service description scheme serves as a core for desigining the four main functions of a service directory: a template-based user interface, semantic query expansion algorithms, a two-level indexing scheme that combines Bloom filters with a Distributed Hash Table, and a distributed approach for storing service description. The service directory is, in turn, implemented as an extension of the Open Service Discovery Architecture. <br /><br /> The search algorithms presented in this thesis are designed to maximize precision and completeness of service discovery, while the distributed design of the directory allows individual administrative domains to retain a high degree of independence and maintain access control to information about their services.

In order to compete with the global giants, enterprises are concentrating on their core competencies and collaborating with organizations that compliment their skills and core activities. The current trend is to develop temporary alliances of independent enterprises, in which companies can come together to share skills, core competencies and resources. However, knowledge sharing and communication among multidiscipline companies is a complex and challenging problem. In a collaborative environment, the meaning of knowledge is drastically affected by the context in which it is viewed and interpreted; thus necessitating the treatment of structure as well as semantics of the data stored in enterprise repositories. Keeping the present market and technological scenario in mind, this research aims to propose tools and techniques that can enable companies to assimilate distributed information resources and achieve their business goals.

In recent years, the use of using metadata to describe and share resources has grown in importance, especially in the context of the Semantic Web.  However, access to metadata is difficult for users without experience with description logic or formal languages, and currently this description applies to most web users.  There is a strong need for interfaces that provide easy access to semantic metadata, enabling novice users to browse, query and create it easily. This thesis describes a natural language generation interface to semantic metadata called LIBER (Language Interface for Browsing and Editing Rdf), driven by domain ontologies which are integrated with domain-specific linguistic information.  LIBER uses the linguistic information to generate fluent descriptions and search terms through syntactic aggregation. The tool contains three modules to support metadata creation, querying and browsing, which implement the WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Meant) natural language generation approach.  Users can add and remove information by editing system-generated feedback texts.  Two studies have been conducted to evaluate LIBER’s usability, and compare it to a different Semantic Web interface.  The studies showed subjects with no prior experience of the Semantic Web could use LIBER effectively to create, search and browse metadata, and were a useful source of ideas in which to improve LIBER’s usability.  However, the results of these studies were less positive than we had hoped, and users actually preferred the other Semantic Web tool.  This has raised questions about which user audience LIBER should aim for, and the extent to which the underlying ontologies influence the usability of the interface. LIBER’s portability to other domains is supported by a tool with which ontology developers without a background in linguistics can prepare their ontologies for use in LIBER by adding the necessary linguistic information.

I detta arbete skriver vi om den semantiska webben och vad den har för effekt på människan. Vi börjar med att skriva vad den semantiska webben är för att sedan gå över till hur webben fram till idag påverkat människan för att kunna fastställa vad en semantisk webb kan göra föratt påverka oss. Vi skriver även om det mänskliga elementet, hur vi utvecklas tillsammansmed teknologin och hur vi har förändrats under processen. Vi skriver hur webben ändrarspråket, tänkandet och till och med hur den gör oss människor lata men även hur den hjälpeross i vår utveckling. / In this paper we write about the semantic web and what effect it has on mankind. We start off by writing what the semantic web is and what it has to offer us. We then write what thedevelopment of todays web has done to affect us to be able to secure a thought of what afuture semantic web might do to affect us. We also write about the human element togetherwith technology to see how we’ve evolved together. We write about how the web haveeffected our language, our thinking and how it’s making us lazier but also how it’s helping usin our development.

Real-world automated reasoning systems, based on classical logic, face logically inconsistent information, and they must cope with it. It is onerous to develop such systems because classical logic is explosive. Recently, progress has been made towards semantics that deal with logical inconsistency. However, such semantics was never analyzed in the aspect of inconsistency tolerant relational model. In our research work, we use an inconsistency and incompleteness tolerant relational model called "Paraconsistent Relational Model." The paraconsistent relational model is an extension of the ordinary relational model that can store, not only positive information but also negative information. Therefore, a piece of information in the paraconsistent relational model has four truth values: true, false, both, and unknown. However, the paraconsistent relational model cannot represent disjunctive information (disjunctive tuples). We then introduce an extended paraconsistent relational model called disjunctive paraconsistent relational model. By using both the models, we handle inconsistency - similar to the notion of quasi-classic logic or four-valued logic -- in deductive databases (logic programs with no functional symbols). In addition to handling inconsistencies in extended databases, we also apply inconsistent tolerant reasoning technique in semantic web knowledge bases. Specifically, we handle inconsistency assosciated with closed predicates in semantic web. We use again the paraconsistent approach to handle inconsistency. We further extend the same idea to description logic programs (combination of semantic web and logic programs) and introduce dl-relation to represent inconsistency associated with description logic programs.

Cette thèse relève de l’ingénierie des connaissances et en particulier elle s’inscrit dans le cadre technique du web sémantique. Nous prenons un objet particulier : une théorie linguistique de la temporalité (temps et aspect), et nous proposons une traduction en plusieurs étapes de cette théorie en un artefact de représentation des connaissances : une ontologie. Nous passons en revue différents modèles (logiques, IA, linguistiques) de représentation du temps. Nous détaillons la notion d’ontologie en elle-même et telle qu’elle est utilisée dans le cadre informatique. Ensuite nous traduisons la théorie linguistique que nous choisissons en un objet vérifiant les propriétés d’un réseau d’entités qui sont caractéristiques d’une ontologie au sens du web sémantique. La dernière étape consiste en l’implémentation de notre ontologie en utilisant les standards W3C. / This is a knowledge engineering work that specifically deal with semantic web technologies. We first take an particular objet: a linguistic theory of time and aspect and we propose a translation of it into a knowledge engineering artefact (an ontology) following several steps. We look at different approach of time (logical, AI, linguistic) of time representation. Then we analyse the notion of ontology as understood in the computer science framework. An ontology is a network of entities, we give a translation of the linguistic theory of time and aspect into an ontology and we translate this resulting ontology using W3C semantic web standards.