Semantic model

In this paper, we propose the development of the Question-Answering Services System for the Farmer, through SMS, by focusing on query analysis and annotation based on a similar technique previously applied to language generation, thematic roles, and primitive systems of the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS). The annotation places emphasis on the semantics model of "What" and "How" queries, lexical inference identification, and semantic role, for the answer. Finally, we show how these annotations and inference rules contribute to the generalization of the matching system over semantic categories in order to have a large scale question-answering system.

In this paper we introduce a logical viewpoint on architectures. The logical viewpoint is based on the distinction between symbolic and semantic models of architectures. The core of a symbolic model consists of its signature that specifies symbolically its structural elements and their relationships. A semantic model is defined as a formal interpretation of the symbolic model. This leads to more precise characterization of the concepts introduced in IEEE standard 1471-2000, and provides a formal approach to the design of enterprise of architectural description languages and a general mathematical foundation for the use of formal methods in enterprise architectures.

The NYU-Ada project is engaged in the design and implementation of a translator-interpreter for the Ada language. The objectives of this project are twofold: a) to provide an executable semantic model for the full Ada language, that can be used for teaching, and serve as a starting point for the design of an efficient Ada compiler; b) to serve as a testing ground for the software methodology that has emerged from our experience with the very-high level language SETL. In accordance with these objectives, the NYU-Ada system is written in a particularly high-level, abstract SETL style that emphasizes clarity of design and user interface over speed and efficiency. A number of unusual design features of the translator and interpreter follow from this emphasis. Some of these features are described below. We also discuss the question of semantic specification of programming languages, and the general methodology of “Software Prototyping” of which the NYU-Ada system is a sizeable example.

The emerging Semantic Web has been attracted many researchers and developers. New applications have been developed on top of Semantic Web and many supporting tools introduced to improve its software development process. Metadata modeling is one of development process where supporting tools exists. The existing tools are lack of readability and easiness for a domain knowledge expert to graphically models a problem in semantic model. In this paper, a metadata modeling tool called RDFGraph is proposed. This tool is meant to solve those problems. RDFGraph is also designed to work with modern database management systems that support RDF and to improve the performance of the query execution process. The testing result shows that the rules used in RDFGraph follows the W3C standard and the graphical model produced in this tool is properly translated and correct.

Software architecture, as a vehicle for communication and reasoning about software systems and their quality, is becoming an area of focus in both the forward-and reverseengineering communities. In the past, we have attempted to unify these areas via a semantic model of reengineering called CORUM II. In this paper we present a concrete example of an architecturally-motivated reengineering task. In executing this task, we perform architecture reconstruction, reason about the reconstructed architecture, motivate an architectural transformation with new architectural quality requirements, and realize this architectural transformation via an automated code transformation.

Composability in Modeling and Simulation community which can be defined as the capability to select and assemble a simulation model out of predefined simulation models or components is an important challenge due to the cost and time spent on developing a simulation model.

Abstract—Interoperability between building information models (BIM) and geographic information models has a strong potential to bring benefit to different demands in construction analysis, urban planning, homeland security and other applications. Therefore, different research and commercial efforts have been initiated to integrate the most prominent semantic models in BIM and geospatial applications. These semantic models are the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) respectively. However, these efforts mainly: a) use a unidirectional approach (mostly from IFC to CityGML) for converting data, or b) Extending CityGML by conceptual requirements for converting CityGML to IFC models. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of unidirectional conversion between IFC and CityGML. The different IFC concepts and its corresponding concepts in CityGML is studied and evaluated. The investigation goes beyond building objects, also includi...

Common Operational Picture and in consequence Situation Awareness, had been second class issue treated as a result of decision support procedures. This work concentrates mainly on developing methods for integrating battlefield data using ontologies and presenting such data in distributed GIS environment supported by reasoning methods. Such approach allows to organize and filter data using predefined filters dedicated for various level of command and types of operations. Combining semantic data and spatial querying mechanisms, produce extendable and rapid mechanism for battlespace information presentation which vastly increases the speed of decision process. Published results contain analysis of known military domain models. Based on such study, author proposed, a core ontology for representing current battlefield scenario, filled with geospatial information and tactical data gathered from decision support algorithms and military domain analysis. The concept have been applied in presented designed and developed prototype in Service Oriented Architecture demonstrating, a Network Enabled Capability integrated battlespace picture.

Various problems have been encountered on public private partnership (PPP) initiatives around the world that have eventually led to project failure. Stakeholder opposition has been reported as the main reason for failure in several instances. As such, capturing and addressing of stakeholder inputs is crucial to the success of PPP projects. Stakeholder involvement (SI) is an interdisciplinary domain that spans many disciplines (engineering, sociology, psychology, marketing, etc). The fragmented nature of knowledge in this domain is impeding project managers from leading successful SI programmes. As such, this paper presents a semantic model and taxonomy that represents the key concepts underlying stakeholder involvement in PPP infrastructure projects. The model has the potential to act as a core for knowledge representation, sharing and reuse in the multidisciplinary domain of SI. A portion of the model is implemented in a knowledge-base that can be used to recommend the most suitable set of stakeholder involvement tools to be utilized on a particular project. The recommendations provided by the system can act as a ‘short-list’ of potential tools to the inexperienced SI coordinator.

Early in Tod Machover's opera Death and the Powers, the main character, Simon Powers, is subsumed into a technological environment of his own creation. The theatrical set comes alive in the form of robotic, visual, and sonic elements that allow the actor to extend his range and influence across the stage in unique and dynamic ways. The environment must compellingly assume the behavior and expression of the absent Simon.

Abstract The study examined the use of code-switching by English and science teachers in secondary schools in Malaysia. It focuses on the functions of code-switching in multilingual classrooms where English is the language of instruction, examining in particular the reiterative function of code-switching and its association with translation. Thirty six lessons of teacher discourse in whole-class teaching for English and science were audiotaped, and 20 lessons were found to contain teacher code-switching. Analysis of the teacher discourse ...

A model and a pattern for data collection on collaborative actions in CSCL systems 31 Martin Mühlenbrock A computational model to differentiate between action and interaction in shared workspaces 37 Dan Suthers Implications of shared representations for computational modeling 42 A process to analyze interactions in collaborative systems with text-based computer mediated communication tools 65 E. J. R. de Castro, G. M. da Nóbrega, E. Ferneda, S. A. Cerri, and F. Lima Towards interaction modelling of asynchronous collaborative model-based learning 71 Katrin Gassner Using patterns to reveal e-mail communication structures 77

Ontologies are specifications of the concepts in a given field, and of the relationships among those concepts. The development of ontologies for molecular-biology information and the sharing of those ontologies within the bioinformatics community are central problems in bioinformatics. If the bioinformatics community is to share ontologies effectively, ontologies must be exchanged in a form that uses standardized syntax and semantics. This paper reports on an effort among the authors to evaluate alternative ontology-exchange languages, and to recommend one or more languages for use within the larger 1 bioinformatics community. The study selected a set of candidate languages, and defined a set of capabilities that the ideal ontology-exchange language should satisfy. The study scored the languages according to the degree to which they satisfied each capability. In addition, the authors performed several ontology-exchange experiments with the two languages that received the highest scores: OML and Ontolingua. The result of those experiments, and the main conclusion of this study, was that the frame-based semantic model of Ontolingua is preferable to the conceptual graph model of OML, but that the XML-based syntax of OML is preferable to the Lisp-based syntax of Ontolingua.

A multitude of new applications is quickly emerging in the field of Building Information Models (BIM). BIM models describe buildings with respect to their spatial and especially semantic and thematic characteristics. Since BIM models are manually created during the planning and construction phase, they are only available for newly planned or recently constructed buildings. In order to apply the new applications to already existing buildings, methods for the acquisition of BIM models for built-up sites are required. Primary data source are 3D geometry models obtained from surveying, CAD, or computer graphics. Automation of this process is highly desirable, but faces a range of specific problems setting the bar very high for a reconstruction process. This paper discusses these problems and identifies consequential requirements on reconstruction methods. Above, a two-step strategy for BIM model reconstruction is proposed which incorporates CityGML as an intermediate layer between 3D gr...

Modeling of semantics is one of the most di cult tasks in database design. Constraints are used to express database semantics. They are used di erently in database models. They express domain restrictions, specify relationships between components and state database behavior. The utilization depends on the richness of the type system used in the model. The relational model is using a simple type system and has a very large set of integrity constraints. Semantical models are using richer type systems which express also di erent types of integrity constraints. At the same time, the theory of integrity constraints is more complex. Object-oriented models use either a simple type system or type systems like the semantical models. The theory of integrity constraints is still under development. This overview tries to give a unifying framework on integrity constraints. 1

This paper presents a first draft of a context management model and architecture in the scope of mobile end-user services, paying special attention to mobile scenarios and specific mobility environments. The paper describes our notion of context and presents the process followed for developing the ontologies for representing context, providing an overview of the first version of these ontologies. Besides, we propose an architecture for managing context in mobile environments, including high-level descriptions of the components that compose it, as well as some low level details regarding the contextual interfaces involved. To show the way all these components interoperate and the advantages of the defined architecture and semantic model, we describe a use case with specific implementation details.

XML is rapidly becoming technologies for information exchange and representation. It causes many research issues such as semantic modeling methods, conversion for interoperability with other models, and so on. Especially, the most important issue in practical area is how to achieve the interoperability between XML model and relational database model. Until now, many methods have been proposed to achieve it. However, several problems still remain. Most of all, existing methods do not consider implicit referential integrity relations, so it causes loss of information. This paper proposes an algorithm for extracting referential integrity relations during RDB to XML translation. The key point of our method is how to find implicit referential integrity relations among columns which have different names to represent the same semantic. To resolve it, we define an enhanced extraction algorithm which based on a widely used ontology, WordNet. The proposed algorithm can reduce an extraction time among comparison columns in RDB tables and prevent loss of information.

Computer games often take place in extensive virtual worlds, attractive for roaming and exploring. Unfortunately, current virtual cities can strongly hinder this kind of gameplay, since the buildings they feature typically have replicated interiors, or no interiors at all. Procedural content generation is becoming more established, with many techniques for automatically creating specific building elements. However, the integration of these techniques to form complete buildings is still largely unexplored, limiting their application to open game worlds. We propose a novel approach that integrates existing procedural techniques to generate such buildings. With minimal extensions, individual techniques can be coordinated to create buildings with consistently interrelated exteriors and interiors, as in the real world. Our solution offers a framework where various procedural techniques communicate with a moderator, which is responsible for negotiating the placement of building elements, making use of a library of semantic classes and constraints. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by presenting several examples featuring the integration of a façade shape grammar, two different floor plan layout generation techniques, and furniture placement techniques. We conclude that this approach allows one to preserve the individual qualities of existing procedural techniques, while assisting the consistency maintenance of the generated buildings.

With the current explosion of data, retrieving and integrating information from various sources is a critical problem. Work in multidatabase systems has begun to address this problem, but it has primarily focused on methods for communicating between databases and requires signi cant e ort for each new database added to the system. This paper describes a more general approach that exploits a semantic model of a problem domain to integrate the information from various information sources. The information sources handled include both databases and knowledge bases, and other information sources (e.g., programs) could potentially be incorporated into the system. This paper describes how both the domain and the information sources are modeled, shows how a query at the domain level is mapped into a set of queries to individual information sources, and presents algorithms for automatically improving the e ciency of queries using knowledge about both the domain and the information sources. This work is implemented in a system called SIMS and has been tested in a transportation planning domain using nine Oracle databases and a Loom knowledge base.

In English and Hungarian there are some verbs and constructions that do not allow definite arguments in certain positions (Definiteness Effect). This phenomenon is related to the ambiguous, weak or strong interpretation of indefinite noun phrases. In Hungarian productive noun incorporation is possible if the verb exhibits the definiteness restriction. In this paper a model-theoretic account of these phenomena will be presented. Two disjunct structures of entities (objects and events) are used for modelling nominal and verbal denotations. The direction and other properties of the functions linking them will give an explanation to the peculiarities of the linguistic data examined. It is shown that the seemingly different constraints can be traced back to the same general mathematical properties of the semantic model.

A historian of 20 th century philosophy of science that were to consider the recent renaissance of studies on the ontological status of spacetime would certainly notice a significant shift of interest toward metaphysical issues previously scorned by neopositivists philosophers. 2 Some philosophers more inclined toward historical analysis have complained about the audacious tendency of some contemporary philosophers of space and time to portray Newton and Leibniz (see Alexander 1956) as defenders of views that, like substantivalism and relationism, do not always represent in an accurate way the positions really taken by these historical figures (see . However, worse than such moderate forms of "interpretive violence" perpetrated on 17 th century natural philosophers -which in any case are not motivated by unfair attempts to add significance to one's pet philosophical problem by ennobling its historical pedigree -is the fact that the current participants to the debate don't even seem to agree about how to formulate "spacetime substantivalism" 3 within the fundamental spacetime theory of contemporary physics, the general theory of relativity. For example, it is not clear whether one should identify spacetime with the bare manifold or with the metric field. As is often the case when there is no agreement even about the nature of the problem, there is a natural tendency to affirm that 1 I want to thank Robert Rynasiewicz and Robert DiSalle for having read a previous version of this paper and having helped to remove some of my misinterpretations of their views. I am the only responsible for the remaining mistakes. 2 Such foundational studies were revived in the late eighties by the so-called "hole argument" due to John for discussions of the philosophical and metaphysical issues. The tendency to misrepresent Leibniz and Newton as defenders of relationism and substantivalism respectively was decisively more present in the philosophy of space and time of the first part of the century, and especially in Reichenbach.

Resumen En 2000 las Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas lanzaron un nuevo proyecto: A Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (de aquí en más SDBH). Este diccionario es, hasta cierto punto, comparable con el Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament de Louw y Nida, si bien su metodología es un tanto diferente. La obra de Louw y Nida está basada en el modelo semántico al que generalmente nos referimos como análisis componencial del lenguaje. Este nuevo diccionario se basa básicamente en perspectivas de la lingüística cognitiva. Como resultado de esto, la metodología subyacente está basada en una distinción entre los campos semánticos léxicos y contextuales. Este trabajo se concentra mayormente en la forma del SDBH de tratar las metáforas. En primer lugar se brindará una descripción de las metáforas y de otras extensiones del significado desde un punto de vista cognitivo. La segunda parte se ocupa de la perspectiva cognitiva en las metáforas del hebreo bíblico. Finalmente, se dan algunos ejemplos de la forma en que el SDBH procura tratar las metáforas.

Modeling of semantics is one of the most di cult tasks in database design. Constraints are used to express database semantics. They are used di erently in database models. They express domain restrictions, specify relationships between components and state database behavior. The utilization depends on the richness of the type system used in the model. The relational model is using a simple type system and has a very large set of integrity constraints. Semantical models are using richer type systems which express also di erent types of integrity constraints. At the same time, the theory of integrity constraints is more complex. Object-oriented models use either a simple type system or type systems like the semantical models. The theory of integrity constraints is still under development. This overview tries to give a unifying framework on integrity constraints. 1

Increased demand for tools that allow merging of Building Information Models with GIS models is observed in the last several years. Professionals from both domains are looking for solutions to seamlessly integrate such models for various purposes such as, building and construction analysis, urban planning, tourism, cadastre, homeland security, etc. Researchers suggested that the best approach for such integration is harmonised semantics, which will allow formal mappings between the design (BIM) and real world (GIS) models. Although many geometric models have been developed in both domains, the number of semantic models is relatively few. Two most prominent semantic models in the design and real worlds are currently IFC and CityGML. Several studies demonstrate the transfer of information from IFC models into the CityGML but the literature is lacking a formal and descriptive framework for automatic generation of buildings in CityGML using the IFC models. This paper presents preliminary ideas for defining a semantic mapping, which will allow automatic transformations between the two models.

DWQ is a cooperative project in the ESPRIT program of the European Communities. It aims at establishing foundations of data warehouse quality through linking semantic models of data warehouse architecture to explicit models of data quality. This paper provides an overview of the project goals and offers an architectural framework in which the individual research contributions are embedded.

— Ambient intelligence implies that a collection of everyday devices incorporates inside computing and networking capabilities that enable them to interact with each other, make intelligent decision and interact with users through user friendly multimodal interfaces. Ambient intelligence is driven by users’ needs and their design should be driven by users ’ requirements. An example of an application exhibiting ambient intelligence technologies is home automation. The consequence of putting computing capabilities in everyday devices is the development of some software to install and run on them. The presence of software requires certain procedures for managing its versions and configurations. The COMANCHE project aims to design and develop a software configuration management infrastructure which can be used in the home automation domain. In such an environment, certain issues should be considered before installing new software versions on a given device, such as the user profile, exi...

Interoperability in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is a full-grown subject and an objective with many shortcomings as far as definition of standards for geographic data transfer and exchange, different data types' integration, and comprehensive semantic models is concerned. There is a vast literature available on interoperability models containing different interoperability levels, including technological, syntactic and semantic levels. However, very limited research has been carried out on the development of interoperability models for the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). This paper provides a short review of the main advances in interoperability related to SDI. It also discusses the important role of metadata elements in the formalization of interoperability models for the implementation of SDI. We propose an integrated interoperability model based on the definition of a common template that integrates seven interoperability levels: technical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, dynamic, conceptual and organizational. The implementation is carried out by automatic production of ISO19115 metadata. Finally, the results outline the strength and deficiencies in terms of the dynamic interoperability level of SDI based on the elements of ISO19115 metadata.

| This paper describes a technique for the automatic generation of an interpretive implementation for a programming language from a layered operational semantic description of the language. Layers in the semantic model represent levels of abstraction which correspond to the needs of various classes of user of the semantic description (programmers, language designers, and so on). The layers are built one atop the other, with the innermost layer of the model being based on the algebraic speci cation of abstract data types. Di erent kinds of user can thus use the same language de nition, examining it to di ering levels of detail. The complete layered programming language de nition can be submitted to a system which automatically generates an interpretive implementation of the language. The implementation will hence be consistent with the description of the language being used by each kind of user. In particular, this technique presents many advantages for language designers, since aspects of the language description within any of the layers may be altered and a new experimental implementation obtained.

Reputation is a complex concept that has a major role in fields like social sciences, economics as well as computer science. Representing it as a simple form of property-rating or a vector of ratings strips it from its original notion and postulation. It does not also facilitate the derivation of meaningful conclusions from it. This paper presents a semantic model for the representation of reputation as a complex object -a so called Reputation Object (RO). We also argue that using ontologies, and other semantic web technologies, to represent the reputation object model is essential to achieve reputation interoperability and portability between different domains. The contribution is a semantic design artifact for reputation representation that agrees with the theoretical and social formation and processing of reputation information. We also show some applications and how this ontologybased reputation model can be applied in a rule-based open reputation system. The work presented here has significant implications for e-market studies of knowledge sharing.

Using today's GIS tools, users without programming expertise are unable to fully exploit the growing amount of geospatial data becoming available because today's tools limit them to displaying data as layers for a region on a map. Fusing the data in more complex ways requires the ability to invoke processing algorithms and to combine the data these algorithms produce in sophisticated ways. Our approach, implemented in a tool called Karma, encapsulates these algorithms as Web services described using semantic models that not only specify the data types for the inputs and outputs, but also specify the relationships between them. Karma semi-automatically builds these models from sample data and then uses these models to provide an easy to use interface that lets users seamlessly implement workflows that combine and process the data in sophisticated ways.

Computer games often take place in extensive virtual worlds, attractive for roaming and exploring. Unfortunately, current virtual cities can strongly hinder this kind of gameplay, since the buildings they feature typically have replicated interiors, or no interiors at all. Procedural content generation is becoming more established, with many techniques for automatically creating specific building elements. However, the integration of these techniques to form complete buildings is still largely unexplored, limiting their application to open game worlds. We propose a novel approach that integrates existing procedural techniques to generate such buildings. With minimal extensions, individual techniques can be coordinated to create buildings with consistently inter-related exteriors and interiors, as in the real world. Our solution offers a framework where various procedural techniques communicate with a moderator, which is responsible for negotiating the placement of building elements, making use of a library of semantic classes and constraints. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by presenting several examples featuring the integration of a façade shape grammar, two different floor plan layout generation techniques, and furniture placement techniques. We conclude that this approach allows one to preserve the individual qualities of existing procedural techniques, while assisting the consistency maintenance of the generated buildings.

We present a model of object-oriented and component-based refinement. For object-orientation, the model is class-based and refinement is about correct changes in the structure, methods of classes and the main program, rather than changes in the behaviour of individual objects. This allows us to prove refinement laws for both high level design patterns and low level refactoring. For component-based development, we focus on the separation of concerns of interface and functional contracts, leaving refinement of interaction protocols in future work. The model supports the specification of these aspects at different levels of abstractions and their consistency. We the presentation of the semantics, we also provide a general definitional approach to defining different relational semantic models with different features and constraints.

Head pose and gesture offer several key conversational grounding cues and are used extensively in face-to-face interaction among people. While the machine interpretation of these cues has previously been limited to output modalities, recent advances in facepose tracking allow for systems which are robust and accurate enough to sense natural grounding gestures. We present the design of a module that detects these cues and show examples of its integration in three different conversational agents with varying degrees of discourse model complexity. Using a scripted discourse model and off-the-shelf animation and speech-recognition components, we demonstrate the use of this module in a novel "conversational tooltip" task, where additional information is spontaneously provided by an animated character when users attend to various physical objects or characters in the environment. We further describe the integration of our module in two systems where animated and robotic characters interact with users based on rich discourse and semantic models.

In this paper we present pddl+, a planning domain description language for modelling mixed discrete-continuous planning domains. We describe the syntax and modelling style of pddl+, showing that the language makes convenient the modelling of complex time-dependent effects. We provide a formal semantics for pddl+ by mapping planning instances into constructs of hybrid automata. Using the syntax of HAs as our semantic model we construct a semantic mapping to labelled transition systems to complete the formal interpretation of pddl+ planning instances. An advantage of building a mapping from pddl+ to HA theory is that it forms a bridge between the Planning and Real Time Systems research communities. One consequence is that we can expect to make use of some of the theoretical properties of HAs. For example, for a restricted class of HAs the Reachability problem (which is equivalent to Plan Existence) is decidable. pddl+ provides an alternative to the continuous durative action model of pddl2.1, adding a more flexible and robust model of time-dependent behaviour.

This paper describes the basic philosophy and implementation of MPLUS (M+), a robust medical text analysis tool that uses a semantic model based on Bayesian Networks (BNs). BNs provide a concise and useful formalism for representing semantic patterns in medical text, and for recognizing and reasoning over those patterns. BNs are noise-tolerant, and facilitate the training of M+. 1

Notwithstanding its acknowledged richness, the SIMPLE semantic model does not offer the representational vocabulary for encoding some conceptual links holding between events and their participants and among co-participants in events. Although critical for boosting performance in many NLP application tasks, such deep lexical information is therefore only partially encoded in the SIMPLE-CLIPS Italian semantic database. This paper reports on the enrichment of the SIMPLE relation set by some expressive means, namely semantic relations, borrowed from the EuroWordNet model and their implementation in the SIMPLE-CLIPS lexicon. The original situation existing in the database, as to the expression of this type of information is described and the loan descriptive vocabulary presented. Strategies based on the exploitation of the source lexicon data were adopted to induce new information: a wide range of semantic ─ but also syntactic ─ information was investigated for singling out word senses c...

Substantial amounts of data on cell signaling, metabolic, gene regulatory and other biological pathways have been accumulated in literature and electronic databases. Conventionally, this information is stored in the form of pathway diagrams and can be characterized as highly "compartmental" (i.e. individual pathways are not connected into more general networks). Current approaches for representing pathways are limited in their capacity to model molecular interactions in their spatial and temporal context. Moreover, the critical knowledge of cause-effect relationships among signaling events is not reflected by most conventional approaches for manipulating pathways. We have applied a semantic network (SN) approach to develop and implement a model for cell signaling pathways. The semantic model has mapped biological concepts to a set of semantic agents and relationships, and characterized cell signaling events and their participants in the hierarchical and spatial context. In...

The eventuality of the Semantic Web offers multiple attractive features to the enterprise infrastructure in the area of improved Knowledge Management and information retrieval. Current relational database models adequately perform in the transactional processing of operational data, but do little toward the advancement of knowledge foundations for innovation. The movement from an information economy to a knowledge economy mandates that successful organizations must innovate at a faster rate than their competitors. To this end, Information Systems must extend technological infrastructures away from relational transaction systems toward higher order semantic models that can accommodate schemas based on Ontologies. This report details a methodology for mapping relational data systems to a higher order semantic model that can implement an ontology-driven information system. Additionally, this report provides conclusions about the application of ontology- driven information systems to th...

Reference books and encyclopedic knowledge bases present learners with an important source of fundamental concepts. However, the resulting knowledge acquisition process is often hindered by the linearity that is inherent to these resources, making it difficult for learners to realize the many links that exist between these concepts. This research project aims at establishing and implementing a rich semantic model for the identification and classification of knowledge in a coreperiphery structure at the service of graduate level students of engineering sciences. This model will allow learners to obtain a global view of knowledge domains and to identify roadmaps for the knowledge acquisition process.

Quality of integrated data depends on the quality of original data sources, but it can also be affected by the semantic mapping process between ontologies of different sources, thus influencing the quality of querying between multiple data sources. Being aware of semantic mapping quality could help interpreting mapping results in order to obtain better integration of heterogeneous data and would provide higher data quality to users. The question that is still unanswered is how semantic mapping quality can be defined and represented. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for characterising semantic mapping quality, which includes a metamodel showing relationship between semantic mappings and their quality aspects, as well as original definitions for characteristics of mapping quality. We define several Mapping Conflict Predicates that can be used to detect incoherence between mappings. We also propose a new semantic model of mapping that includes the different characteristics of mapping quality, which we called semantic model of quality mapping.

Heuristics have long been recognised as a way to tackle problems which are intractable because of their size or complexity. They have been used in software engineering for purposes such as identification of favourable regions of design space. Some heuristics in software engineering can be expressed in high-level abstract terms while others are more specific. Heuristics tend to be couched in terms which make them hard to automate. In our previous work we have developed robust semantic models of software in order to support the computation of metrics and the construction of visualisations which allow their interpretation by developers. In this paper, we show how software engineering heuristics can be supported by a semantic model infrastructure. Examples from our current work illustrate the value of combining the rigour of a semantic model with the human mental models associated with heuristics.

Intellectual Merit. Advances in environmental science increasingly depend on information from multiple disciplines to tackle broader and more complex questions about the natural world. Such advances, however, are hindered by data heterogeneity, which impedes the ability of researchers to discover, interpret, and integrate relevant data that have been collected by others. A recent NSF-funded workshop on multidisciplinary data management concluded that interoperability can be significantly improved by better describing data at the level of observation and measurement, rather than the traditional focus at the level of the data set. That is, for systems to interoperate effectively, the scientific community must unify the various existing approaches for representing and describing observational data. A community-sanctioned, unified data model for observational data is thus needed to enable interoperability among existing data resources, which will in turn provide the necessary foundation to support cross-disciplinary synthetic research in the environmental sciences. The investigators propose the Scientific Observations Network to initiate a multidisciplinary , community-driven effort to define and develop the necessary specifications and technologies to facilitate semantic interpretation and integration of observational data. The technological approaches will derive from recent advances in knowledge representation that have demonstrated practical utility in enhancing scientific communication and data interoperability within the genomics community. This effort will constitute a community of experts consisting of environmental science researchers, computer scientists, and information managers, to develop open-source, standards-based approaches to the semantic modeling of observational data. Subgroups of Network experts will also engage in extending this core data model to include a broad range of specific measurements collected by the representative set of disciplines, and a series of demonstration projects will illustrate the capabilities of the approaches to confederate data for reuse in broader and unanticipated contexts. Broader Impacts. There is currently fragmentation among the environmental science subdisciplines, such that each is typically working to meet its own, internal data access and integration needs, without considering how data interoperability could be achieved more broadly through collaboration with researchers and technologists from other fields. By bringing together scientists from representative environmental disciplines, knowledge engineers and conceptual modeling experts, and specialist information managers working within these domains, we hope to initiate a new crosscutting network to derive consensus on technology strategies for achieving data interoperability. This will be accomplished by retaining the momentum of prior NSFfunded activities that have identified a clear path forward for dealing with data interoperability, recommending that the broader community develop and ratify a unified model for scientific observation onto which current and future data models can be superimposed. Key to the success of the proposed network will be outreach to the broader environmental science communities and stakeholders through a number of meetings and community-focused workshops. These activities will directly engage a diverse group of community members, allowing the broader community to contribute requirements and use cases, provide feedback on proposed approaches, and participate in community-building activities (such as ratification of a core data model). Education will also be key to project success and will be supported through a number of activities including student participation in network meetings and a workshop dedicated to training students, postdoctoral scientists, and researchers on the models and approaches developed through the network.