Using OWL ontologies for adaptive patient information modelling and preoperative clinical decision support

We here present our research and experience regarding the design and implementation of a knowledge-based preoperative assessment decision support system. We discuss generic design considerations as well as the practical system implementation. We developed the system using semantic web technology, including modular ontologies developed in the OWL web ontology language, the OWL Java application programming interface and an automated logic reasoner. We discuss how the system enables to tailor patient information collection according to personalized medical context. The use of ontologies at the core of the system’s architecture permits to efficiently manage a vast repository of preoperative assessment domain knowledge, including classification of surgical procedures, classification of morbidities and guidelines for routine preoperative tests. Logical inference on the domain knowledge according to individual patient’s medical context enables personalized patients’ reports consisting of a risk assessment and clinical recommendations such as relevant preoperative tests.     

A ‘smart house’ is not a home: The domestication of ICTs

This paper discusses the domestication of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly their use, in UK households reporting on research undertaken between 1998 and 2004. Issues raised are linked to the dominant discourse of the ‘digital divide’, which in the UK means engaging with ICTs in a ‘meaningful’ way to ensure the economic and social well-being of UK plc (public limited company—in the UK this refers to companies whose shares can be sold to the public. The acronym is used here ironically to indicate the motivation of the government to brand and promote the UK as a whole.). Utilising a framework of understanding digital inequality and the ‘deepening divide’, domestication theory is applied to discuss motivational, material and physical, skills and usage access in the gendered household, critically contrasting this approach to ‘smart house’ research. This qualitative enquiry contributes to the neglected area of domestication studies in Information Systems research.     

YUTPA as a design tool for public participation

Engaging the public in decision-making processes is commonly accepted as an effective strategy for a better policy making, a better policy support and for narrowing the gap between government and the public. In today’s digitised society, participation via online media is becoming more important. But is this so-called e-participation being used optimally? Or is a better design possible? In my opinion, the answer to these questions is a ‘yes’. Despite numerous efforts in engaging the public with policy deliberation, the actual amount of participants remains low. In this article, I have used the YUTPA model (Nevejan 2009) to analyse some existing e-participation projects. Additionally, I derived ten characteristics of ‘play’ to make proposals for a more designerly e-participation approach.     

Semantic Interoperability Aggregation in Service Requirements Refinement

Semantic refinement of stakeholders’ requirements is a fundamental issue in requirements engineering. Facing with the on-demand collaboration problem among the heterogeneous, autonomous, and dynamic service resources in the Web, service requirements refinement becomes extremely important, and the key issue in service requirements refinement is semantic interoperability aggregation. A method for creating connecting ontologies driven by requirement sign ontology is proposed. Based on connecting ontologies, a ...     

基于本体集成的语义标注模型设计

语义Web的全面实现需借助于语义标注,标注网页信息会涉及到多个本体.据此,通过研究桥本体,提出一个在本体集成的基础上建立起来的多本体语义标注模型.该模型利用桥本体集成顶层本体和多个领域本体,同时借助基于本体的信息抽取技术对网页进行语义标注,并将标注信息存入标注库,使标注信息与网页分离,提高语义检索的效率.通过举例说明了本模型的合理性.     

DSM as a knowledge capture tool in CODE environment

A design structure matrix (DSM) provides a simple, compact, and visual representation of a complex system/ process. This paper shows how DSM, a system engineering tool, is applied as a knowledge capture (acquisition) tool in a generic NPD process. The acquired knowledge (identified in the DSM) is provided in the form of Questionnaires, which are organized into five performance indicators of the organization namely ‘Marketing’, ‘Technical’, ‘Financial’, ‘Resource Management’, and ‘Project Management’. Industrial application is carried out for knowledge validation. It is found form the application that the acquired knowledge helps NPD teams, managers and stakeholders to benchmark their NPD endeavor and select areas to focus their improvement efforts (up to 80% valid).     

Semantically-enabled service oriented architecture : concepts, technology and application

Semantically enabled service-oriented architecture focused on principles of service orientation, semantic modeling, intelligent and automated integration defines grounds for a cutting-edge technology which enables new means to integration of services, more adaptive to changes in business requirements which occur over systems’ lifetime. We define the architecture starting from a global perspective and through Web service modeling ontology as its semantic service model we narrow down to its services, processes and technology we use for the reference implementation. On a B2B integration scenario we demonstrate several aspects of the architecture and further describe the evaluation of the implementation according to a community-agreed standard evaluation methodology for semantic-based systems.     

面向服务环境下基于本体映射的多领域业务过程协同*

为解决面向服务环境下多领域业务过程协同中的语义不一致问题,使不同领域提供的Web服务实现无障碍交互以及数据和知识共享,提出基于本体映射的多领域业务过程协同框架。首先根据领域知识建立参考本体,然后根据各领域的参考本体生成领域间的协同本体,最后将协同本体通过映射转换到BPEL和WSDL文件。该方法能够保留流程与Web服务中的原始语义信息,从而保证不同领域业务过程协同地顺利进行。原型系统在欧盟ImportNET项目中得到了验证。     

基于机器学习的本体集成框架

语义服务是下一代Web服务面临的关键问题．语义网为实现广泛的语义服务提供了可能,Ontology是语义网体系结构的核心。针对协作的分布式系统需要语义互联的问题,本文分析了造成语义互联困难的主要因素是本体的匹配和集成,提出了一个基于机器学习的Ontology集成的框架模型。     

A configurable translation-based cross-lingual ontology mapping system to adjust mapping outcomes

Ontologies are widely considered as the building blocks of the semantic web, and with them, comes the data interoperability issue. As ontologies are not necessarily always labelled in the same natural language, one way to achieve semantic interoperability is by means of cross-lingual ontology mapping. Translation techniques are often used as an intermediate step to translate the conceptual labels within an ontology. This approach essentially removes the natural language barrier in the mapping environment and enables the application of monolingual ontology mapping tools. This paper shows that the key to this translation-based approach to cross-lingual ontology mapping lies with selecting appropriate ontology label translations in a given mapping context. Appropriateness of the translations in the context of cross-lingual ontology mapping differs from the ontology localisation point of view, as the former aims to generate correct mappings whereas the latter aims to adapt specifications of conceptualisations to target communities. This paper further demonstrates that the mapping outcome using the translation-based cross-lingual ontology mapping approach is conditioned on the translations selected for the intermediate label translation step. In particular, this paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel cross-lingual ontology mapping system: SOCOM++. SOCOM++ provides configurable properties that can be manipulated by a user in the process of selecting label translations in an effort to adjust the subsequent mapping outcome. It is shown through the evaluation that for the same pair of ontologies, the mappings between them can be adjusted by tuning the translations for the ontology labels. This finding is not yet shown in the previous research.     

一种面向语义网服务的本体映射框架*

本体的异构性阻碍了语义网服务的互操作。从解决语义网服务中本体的异构问题出发,同时考虑到目前的本体映射系统大多效率不高、映射结果不够准确的问题,提出了一种适用于语义网服务的本体映射方法及系统框架。该方法利用机器学习技术来提高本体映射的自动化程度,利用综合评判技术修正映射结果,以提高本体映射的准确率。采用OAEI 2007的基准测试数据集benchmarks进行实验测试,结果表明本系统的性能基本达到预期效果,能够有效地解决语义网服务中的本体异构问题。     

False Requirements Express Real Needs

Requirements Engineering for airing readers’ views on requirements engineering research and practice. Contributions that describe results, experiences, biases and research agendas in requirements engineering are particularly welcome. ‘Viewpoints’ is an opportunity for presenting technical correspondence or subjective arguments. So, whether you are a student, teacher, researcher or practitioner, get on your soapbox today and let us know what’s on your mind . . . Please submit contributions electronically to Viewpoints Editor, Bashar Nuseibeh (ban@doc.ic.ac.uk). Contributions less than 2000 words in length are preferred.     

An autonomous service‐platform to support distributed ontology‐based context‐aware agents

The use of semantic technology has recently witnessed a huge increase. One of the areas in which this technology is being used increasingly more often is that of context‐aware agents. However, the use of ontologies in general and reasoning in particular can rapidly become resource intensive. Certainly if the data set, called the A‐Box, used by these agents grows considerably over time. Moreover, in order to create context‐aware applications, taking into account a wide range of different data sets and context parameters, agents have to be provided to expose that data. The collaboration between the agents in the system is necessary to correlate the information and augment the intelligence and added value of the context‐aware agents. Therefore, there is a need to have a distributed approach by means of a service‐platform, where the different agents in a context‐aware environment can collaborate. The main focus of this article is on the research on the design of a service‐platform for semantic ontology‐based context‐aware collaboration. The platform architecture to allow the collaboration and scheduling, together with the associated algorithms, will be presented. The engineering and implementation details will be highlighted. By means of detailed UML sequence diagrams, we will present the workflow and collaboration between the different modules in the platform. Additionally, supporting developments, such as the meta‐ontology and our ontology generator, OTAGen, will be presented. Furthermore, we will detail how the platform can operate in an autonomous way, taking into account the changing context of the agents in the platform.     

Evaluating the validity of data instances against ontology evolution over the Semantic Web

It is natural for ontologies to evolve over time. These changes could be at structural and semantic levels. Due to changes to an ontology, its data instances may become invalid, and as a result, may become non-interpretable. In this paper, we address precisely this problem, validity of data instances due to ontological evolution. Towards this end, we make the following three novel contributions to the area of Semantic Web. First, we propose formal notions of structural validity and semantic validity of data instances, and then present approaches to ensure them. Second, we propose semantic view as part of an ontology, and demonstrate that it is sufficient to validate a data instance against the semantic view rather than the entire ontology. We discuss how the semantic view can be generated through an implication analysis, i.e., how semantic changes to one component imply semantic changes to other components in the ontology. Third, we propose a validity identification approach that employs locally maintaining a hash value of the semantic view at the data instance.     

A knowledge encapsulation approach to ontology modularization

The development of monolithic ontologies for complex domains may face various challenges in reasoning and implementation. The notion of modularity can be employed for developing more efficient ontologies, especially in distributed environments. In this paper, we introduce a framework for developing ontologies in a modular manner. We describe the interface-based modular ontology formalism, (IBF), which theoretically supports the framework. The main feature of the framework is its support for knowledge encapsulation, i.e., it allows ontologies to define their main content using well-defined interfaces, such that their knowledge bases can only be accessed by other ontologies through these interfaces. An important implication of the proposed framework is that ontology modules can be developed completely independent of each other’s signature and languages. Such modules are free to only utilize the required knowledge segments of the others. We also investigate the issues of inconsistency in the proposed modular ontology framework. We provide solutions for isolating inconsistent ontology modules from the other parts of a modular ontology and also resolve inconsistencies which may be arisen by integrating consistent knowledge bases.     

‘Working Well, Together’: Arts-Based Research and the Cultural Future of Small Cities

This article offers a research update on a 3-year programme initiated by the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, British Columbia. The programme is supported by a ‘Community–University Research Alliance’ grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the collaboration focuses on the cultural future of small cities – on how cultural and arts organisations work together (or fail to work together) in a small city setting. If not by definition, then certainly by default, ‘culture’ is associated with big city life: big cities are equated commonly with ‘big culture’; small cities with something less. The Cultural Future of Small Cities research group seeks to provide a more nuanced view of what constitutes culture in a small Canadian city. In particular, the researchers are exploring notions of social capital and community asset building: in this context, ‘visual and verbal representation’, ‘home’, ‘community’ and the need to define a local ‘sense of place’ have emerged as important themes. As the Small Cities programme begins its second year, a unique but key aspect has become the artist-as-researcher. Correspondence and offprint requests to: L. Dubinsky, Kamloops Art Gallery, 101–465 Victoria Street, Kamloops, BC V2C 2A9 Canada. Tel.: 250-828-3543; Email: ldubinsky@museums.ca     

Remote Collaboration Over Video Data: Towards Real-Time e-Social Science

The design of distributed systems to support collaboration among groups of scientists raises new networking challenges that grid middleware developers are addressing. This field of development work, ‘e-Science’, is increasingly recognising the critical need of understanding the ordinary day-to-day work of doing research to inform design. We have investigated one particular area of collaborative social scientific work – the analysis of video data. Based on interviews and observational studies, we discuss current practices of social scientific work with digital video in three areas: Preparation for collaboration; Control of data and application; and Annotation configurations and techniques. For each, we describe how these requirements feature in our design of a distributed video analysis system as part of the MiMeG project: our security policy and distribution; the design of the control system; and providing freeform annotation over data. Finally, we review our design in light of initial use of the software between project partners; and discuss how we might transform the spatial configuration of the system to support annotation behaviour.