OBJECTIVES: Due to the lack of an internationally accepted and adopted standard for coding health interventions, Austria has established its own country-specific procedure classification system - the Austrian Procedure Catalogue (APC). Even though the APC is an elaborate coding standard for medical procedures, it has shortcomings that limit its usability. In order to enhance usability and usefulness, especially for research purposes and e-health applications, we developed an ontologized version of the APC. In this paper we present a novel four-step approach for the ontology engineering process, which enables accurate extraction of relevant concepts for medical ontologies from written text. METHODS: The proposed approach for formalizing the APC consists of the following four steps: (1) comparative pre-analysis, (2) definition analysis, (3) typological analysis, and (4) ontology implementation. The first step contained a comparison of the APC to other well-established or elaborate health intervention coding systems in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of the APC. In the second step, a list of definitions of medical terminology used in the APC was obtained. This list of definitions was used as input for Step 3, in which we identified the most important concepts to describe medical procedures using the qualitative typological analysis approach. The definition analysis as well as the typological analysis are well-known and effective methods used in social sciences, but not commonly employed in the computer science or ontology engineering domain. Finally, this list of concepts was used in Step 4 to formalize the APC. RESULTS: The pre-analysis highlighted the major shortcomings of the APC, such as the lack of formal definition, leading to implicitly available, but not directly accessible information (hidden data), or the poor procedural type classification. After performing the definition and subsequent typological analyses, we were able to identify the following main characteristics of health interventions: (1) Procedural type, (2) Anatomical site, (3) Medical device, (4) Pathology, (5) Access, (6) Body system, (7) Population, (8) Aim, (9) Discipline, (10) Technique, and (11) Body Function. These main characteristics were taken as input of classes for the formalization of the APC. We were also able to identify relevant relations between classes. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed four-step approach for formalizing the APC provides a novel, systematically developed, strong framework to semantically enrich procedure classifications. Although this methodology was designed to address the particularities of the APC, the included methods are based on generic analysis tasks, and therefore can be re-used to provide a systematic representation of other procedure catalogs or classification systems and hence contribute towards a universal alignment of such representations, if desired.

With the rapid development of the Web in the direction Social Media, the number of communication possibilities has increased exponentially, bringing new challenges and opportunities for companies to build and shape their reputation online as well as to engage and maintain good relations with their customers. In this paper we describe how semantic technologies enable scalable, effective and efficient on-line communication. We propose four different ways in which semantics can be used for this purpose. First, we discuss semantic analysis of communication items based on 'classical' semantics, such as natural language processing. Second, we look at semantics as a channel, viewing Linked Open Data vocabularies not only as terminological assets but as communication channels. Third, we demonstrate how semantics provide the methodologies and tools for content modeling by means of ontologies. Finally, we outline how semantics through semantic matchmaking enable semi-automatic assignment and distribution of content to channels and vice-versa.

In the energy domain a transition process has begun aiming at the realization of smart grids, where many perspectives on smart grids and thus, different definitions, exist. However, one aspect is widely accepted, namely that ICT is needed to support future smart grids. IT approaches are used to deal with the upcoming data exchange among the different stakeholders. The traditional supply chain, from centralized generation to conventional consumption, has evolved into a multi-dimensional, highly dynamic and complex system. Many new stakeholders such as service providers and prosumers participate in smart grids. Also, automation becomes more and more important, especially novel communication standards like the OPC UA. In this contribution the application of the OPC UA as well as its extension by annotating meta-data to enable semantic web service communication is introduced.

The current shift in realizing distributed applications by applying service-oriented principles translates into more and more web services being published on the Web each day. This introduces a set of new challenges such as how to organize, search, rank and select services. For ranking especially the use of any external information to the service, such as social information coming from Web2.0 sources has the potential to improve the accuracy of this task. In this paper we explore the idea of using social annotations technology for ranking web services. We show how such approach can be implemented using information provided by one of the largest social networks - del.icio.us.

The application of semantics in Web services as semantic Web services for dynamic discovery, composition, invocation and monitoring has been very helpful in enabling Enterprise Application Integration and E-Commerce. There are many initiatives that aim to realize the semantic Web services to enable effective exploitation of semantic annotations, and two major of them are Web service modeling ontology (WSMO) and ontology Web language for services (OWL-S). Several tools have been developed to realize both the conceptual models i.e. Web services execution environment (WSMX) is the reference implementation for WSMO, on the other side OWL-S reference implementation exists in the form of loose collection of individual tools like OWL-S Editor, OWL-S matchmaker, OWL-S virtual machine, OWL-S IDE, WSDL20WL-S converter and OWL-S2UDDI converter etc. In this paper, we have conducted a comparison of both the reference implementations to identify similarities and differences between them and to evaluate their potential to become widely accepted implementation recommendations.

Semantic Web services have been envisioned in the form of different conceptual models like OWL-S, WSMO and WSDL-S. Web services execution environment (WSMX) is our reference implementation for semantic Web service conceptual model, WSMO. In this paper, we have investigated the communication problems that semantic Web services systems are facing. We have proposed how to overcome these problems by using triple space computing as an extended space-based computing paradigm for semantic Web data. We have proposed the usage of triple space computing to improve the internal communication and coordination during the process of execution of semantic Web services. We also have presented and analyzed the experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution.

Computer science is entering a new generation. The previous generation was based on abstracting from hardware. The emerging generation comes from abstracting from software and sees all resources as services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). In a world of services, it is the service that counts for a customer and not the software or hardware components that implement the service. Service-oriented architectures are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm. However, current SOA solutions are still restricted in their application context to in-house solution of companies. A service web will have billions of services. While service orientation is widely acknowledged for its potential to revolutionize the world of computing by abstracting form underlying hardware and software layers, that success depends on resolving fundamental challenges that SOA does not address currently. The mission of Service Web 3.0 is to provide solutions to integration and search that will enable the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) revolution on a worldwide scale. Hereby we must focus on three major areas where we need to extend current approaches towards service orientation:

Recent work in the field of middleware technology proposes semantic spaces as a tool for coping with the scalability, heterogeneity and dynamism issues arising in large scale distributed environments. Reflective middleware moreover offers answers to the needs for adaptivity and selfdetermination of systems where mobility and ubiquity add to such environments. Based on experiences with traditional middleware we argue that ontology-driven management is a major advancement for semantic spaces and provides the fundamental means for reflection. By means of ontologies, and ontology-based reasoning services we can implement automatic adaptation of the middleware's functionality to environmental changes and user desires.

Triple space computing is an emerging technology for communication and coordination of different semantic technologies. It has been achieved by extending tuple space computing to support RDF as triple space computing. It can play an important role by acting as global middleware providing support for collaboration of different semantic technologies. Several participants from semantic Web and semantic Web services applications, distributed worldwide communicate with each other via triple space due to which the possibility of heterogeneity in the RDF schemas and instances among the communicating participants may arise. In order to resolve this heterogeneity issue, data mediation becomes an important part of the triple space computing architecture. In this paper we introduce data mediation support for triple space computing and further explain how mismatches occur in RDF data, presents an abstract mapping language to specify mapping to cover the heterogeneity, defines architecture of the mediation engine and its interfaces, processing of mediation mapping rules, grounding of mediation rules as RDF triples and finally evaluates with examples

Future information, knowledge and content infrastructures which provide highly automatic support in fulfilling users goals will most likely rely on some form of Grid computing. In combination with Semantic Web technologies and Semantic Web services, this infrastructure will be much enhanced to form the Semantic Grid. Last but not least, one of the major driving forces for the Web and its future derivatives is actual content which can range from multimedia data (with some meta data) to "intelligent objects" i.e. content that itself, can either exhibit behavior or at least, carry semantic information that can (and must) be interpreted by the services of the Semantic Grid. This paper proposes GRISINO, an integrated infrastructure for Semantic Web Services, Intelligent Content Objects and Grid that are brought together in the search for an emerging solution that cope with rapidly increasing demands and complexity of next generation distributed applications.

The semantic Web services have been emerging to enable dynamic service discovery, composition, invocation, execution monitoring. On the other hand, software agents are envisioned as autonomous, proactive software entities that act on behalf its users according to a given agenda of goals. Software agents have been envisioned as potential user of semantic Web services in order to interact with semantic descriptions of SWS to autonomously discover, select, compose, invoke and execute the services based on user requirements. However, there exists a communication gap among the both. The major reason is that software agents are not compatible with widely accepted standards of Web services. This paper provides a solution to make multi agent systems compatible with existing Web services standards without changing their existing specifications and implementations, with an assumption that it will be helpful for enabling further interoperability between software agents and semantic Web services. AgentWeb gateway is an initiative for dynamic and seamless interoperation of multi agent systems and Web services. We present abstract architecture and detailed design of the proposed system, abstract algorithms for required protocol transformations, evaluation of the system and analysis of results

This paper gives a high level overview of a framework for describing, analyzing, and executing complex behavior of services in the context of Service Oriented Computing. Having as a starting point the commonly used patterns in workflow specifications, we propose an extension to incorporate temporal constraints, and a way to root them on a logic for transaction composition (Concurrent Transaction Logic) and on a methodology for modelling systems (Abstract State Machines). We motivate our choices and explain the potential benefits of our framework. Finally, we propose concrete steps for future research in this area.

The ultimate goal of the semantic Web is to enable automated collaboration over the Internet, based on ontologies as semantic terminology definitions and Web services as computational facilities accessible over the Web. An essential functionality for collaboration support on the semantic Web is detection of entities, services, and other resources that are to be used for achieving a successful collaboration. This is commonly referred to as discovery, wherefore the emerging concept of semantic Web services promises more effective support than conventional Web service technologies: based on exhaustive semantic description frameworks, intelligent mechanisms are envisioned for discovery, composition, and contracting of Web services. This paper outlines an approach for automated collaboration support using semantic Web services, and presents the realization of semantically driven discovery of cooperation partners and usable Web services as a main component for collaboration establishment.

We analyze typical Web portals supporting communication, data sharing and activities of former classmates. The inflexibility and restrictions imposed on users of such portals are demonstrated to support the thesis that introduction of community-driven ontology management is crucial for full-fledged satisfaction of the user needs on the semantic Web.

We introduce the concept of community-driven ontology management and demonstrate the added value to conventional ontology management of being community-driven. Further, we present an implementation of an infrastructure supporting community-driven ontology management. The implemented infrastructure was deployed as a part of the intranet at DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute, and the community's response and behavior were observed. The results obtained prove feasibility and advantages of community-driven ontology management.

The Semantic Web languages RDFS and OWL have been around for some time now. However, the presence of these languages has not brought the breakthrough of the Semantic Web the creators of the languages had hoped for. OWL has a number of problems in the area of interoperability and usability in the context of many practical application scenarios which impede the connection to the Software Engineering and Database communities. In this paper we present OWL Flight, which is loosely based on OWL, but the semantics is grounded in Logic Programming rather than Description Logics, and it borrows the constraint-based modeling style common in databases. This results in different types of modeling primitives and enforces a different style of ontology modeling. We analyze the modeling paradigms of OWL DL and OWL Flight, as well as reasoning tasks supported by both languages. We argue that different applications on the Semantic Web require different styles of modeling and thus both types of languages are required for the Semantic Web.

Article Share on Enabling knowledge representation on the Web by extending RDF schema Authors: Jeen Broekstra Aidministrator Nederland bv, Holland Aidministrator Nederland bv, HollandView Profile , Michel Klein Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Holland Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HollandView Profile , Stefan Decker Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, StanfordView Profile , Dieter Fensel Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Holland Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HollandView Profile , Frank van Harmelen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Holland Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HollandView Profile , Ian Horrocks Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UKView Profile Authors Info & Claims WWW '01: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on World Wide WebMay 2001 Pages 467–478https://doi.org/10.1145/371920.372105Online:01 April 2001Publication History 50citation1,138DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations50Total Downloads1,138Last 12 Months20Last 6 weeks4 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

A number of formal specification languages for knowledge-based systems has been developed. Characteristics for knowledge-based systems are a complex knowledge base and an inference engine which uses this knowledge to solve a given problem. Specification languages for knowledge-based systems have to cover both aspects. They have to provide the means to specify a complex and large amount of knowledge and they have to provide the means to specify the dynamic reasoning behavior of a knowledge-based system. We focus on the second aspect. For this purpose, we survey existing approaches for specifying dynamic behavior in related areas of research. In fact, we have taken approaches for the specification of information systems (Language for Conceptual Modeling and TROLL), approaches for the specification of database updates and logic programming (Transaction Logic and Dynamic Database Logic) and the generic specification framework of abstract state machines.

Problem solving methods (PSMs) describe the reasoning components of knowledge-based systems as patterns of behavior that can be reused across applications. While the availability of extensive problem solving method libraries and the emerging consensus on problem solving method specification languages indicate the maturity of the field, a number of important research issues are still open. In particular, very little progress has been achieved on foundational and methodological issues. Hence, despite the number of libraries which have been developed, it is still not clear what organization principles should be adopted to construct truly comprehensive libraries, covering large numbers of applications and encompassing both task-specific and task-independent problem solving methods. In this paper, we address these "fundamental" issues and present a comprehensive and detailed framework for characterizing problem solving methods and their development process. In particular, we suggest that PSM development consists of introducing assumptions and commitments along a three-dimensional space defined in terms of problem-solving strategy, task commitments, and domain (knowledge) assumptions. Individual moves through this space can be formally described by means of adapters. In the paper, we illustrate our approach and argue that our architecture provides answers to three fundamental problems related to research in problem solving methods: 1) what is the epistemological structure and what are the modeling primitives of PSMs? 2) how can we model the PSM development process? and 3) how can we develop and organize truly comprehensive and manageable libraries of problem solving methods?.

Ontobroker applies Artificial Intelligence techniques to improve access to heterogeneous, distributed and semi-structured information sources as they are presented in the World Wide Web or organization-wide intranets. It relies on the use of ontologies to annotate web pages, formulate queries and derive answers. In this paper we will briefly sketch Ontobroker. Then we will discuss its main shortcomings, i.e. we will share the lessons we learned from our exercise. We will also show how On2broker overcomes these limitations. Most important is the separation of the query and inference engines and the integration of new web standards like XML and RDF.

Problem-solving methods are means of describing the inference process of knowledge-based systems. In recent years, a number of these problem-solving methods have been identified that can be reused for building new systems. However, problem-solving methods require specific types of domain knowledge and introduce specific restrictions on the tasks that can be solved by them. These requirements and restrictions are assumptions that play a key role in the reuse of problem-solving methods, in the acquisition of domain knowledge, and in the definition of the problem that can be tackled by knowledge-based systems. In this paper we discuss the different roles assumptions play in the development of knowledge-based systems and provide a survey of assumptions used in diagnostic problem solving. We show how such assumptions introduce targets and bias for goal-driven machine learning and knowledge discovery techniques. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL) combines a description of a knowledge based system at the conceptual level (a so called model of expertise) with a description at a formal and executable level. Thus, KARL allows the precise and unique specification of the functionality of a knowledge based system independent of any implementation details. A KARL model of expertise contains the description of domain knowledge, inference knowledge, and procedural control knowledge. For capturing these different types of knowledge, KARL provides corresponding modeling primitives based on Frame Logic and Dynamic Logic. A declarative semantics for a complete KARL model of expertise is given by a combination of these two types of logic. In addition, an operational definition of this semantics, which relies on a fixpoint approach, is given. This operational semantics defines the basis for the implementation of the KARL interpreter, which includes appropriate algorithms for efficiently executing KARL specifications. This enables the evaluation of KARL specifications by means of testing.

Building knowledge-based systems from reusable elements is a key factor in developing them economically. However, one has to ensure that the assumptions and functionality of the reused building block fit together with each other and the specific circumstances of the actual problem and knowledge. We use the Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier (KIV) for this purpose. We show how the verification of conceptual and formal specifications of knowledge-based systems can be performed with it. KIV was originally developed for the verification of procedural programs but it serves well for verifying knowledge-based systems. Its specification language is based on abstract data types for the functional specification of components and dynamic logic for the algorithmic specification. It provides an interactive theorem prover integrated into a sophisticated tool environment supporting aspects like the automatic generation of proof obligations, generation of counter examples, proof management, proof reuse etc. Such a support is essential for making the verification of complex specifications feasible. We provide some examples on how to specify and verify tasks, problem-solving methods, and their relationships.

The authors regard the rule induction problem as a search in the lattice of possible rules. Two kinds of search directions (top=generalization and down=specialization) and therefore two different kinds of algorithms exist. They propose the algorithms RELAX and its heuristical modification H-RELAX, which both use generalization as the search direction and therefore can be used for rule induction and rule pruning. They produce a minimal set of rules or a set of rules which allow object recognition with minimal costs. Both algorithms also allow an incremental and knowledge-based search process and can be combined with other algorithms.>