Describing and communicating uncertainty within the semantic web

The Semantic Web relies on carefully structured, well defined, data to allow machines to communicate and understand one another. In many domains (e.g. geospatial) the data being described contains some uncertainty, often due to incomplete knowledge; meaningful processing of this data requires these uncertainties to be carefully analysed and integrated into the process chain. Currently, within the SemanticWeb there is no standard mechanism for interoperable description and exchange of uncertain information, which renders the automated processing of such information implausible, particularly where error must be considered and captured as it propagates through a processing sequence. In particular we adopt a Bayesian perspective and focus on the case where the inputs / outputs are naturally treated as random variables. This paper discusses a solution to the problem in the form of the Uncertainty Markup Language (UncertML). UncertML is a conceptual model, realised as an XML schema, that allows uncertainty to be quantified in a variety of ways i.e. realisations, statistics and probability distributions. UncertML is based upon a soft-typed XML schema design that provides a generic framework from which any statistic or distribution may be created. Making extensive use of Geography Markup Language (GML) dictionaries, UncertML provides a collection of definitions for common uncertainty types. Containing both written descriptions and mathematical functions, encoded as MathML, the definitions within these dictionaries provide a robust mechanism for defining any statistic or distribution and can be easily extended. Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) are used to introduce semantics to the soft-typed elements by linking to these dictionary definitions. The INTAMAP (INTeroperability and Automated MAPping) project provides a use case for UncertML. This paper demonstrates how observation errors can be quantified using UncertML and wrapped within an Observations & Measurements (O&M) Observation. The interpolation service uses the information within these observations to influence the prediction outcome. The output uncertainties may be encoded in a variety of UncertML types, e.g. a series of marginal Gaussian distributions, a set of statistics, such as the first three marginal moments, or a set of realisations from a Monte Carlo treatment. Quantifying and propagating uncertainty in this way allows such interpolation results to be consumed by other services. This could form part of a risk management chain or a decision support system, and ultimately paves the way for complex data processing chains in the Semantic Web.

Cross ontology query answering on the semantic web:an initial evaluation

PowerAqua is a Question Answering system, which takes as input a natural language query and is able to return answers drawn from relevant semantic resources found anywhere on the Semantic Web. In this paper we provide two novel contributions: First, we detail a new component of the system, the Triple Similarity Service, which is able to match queries effectively to triples found in different ontologies on the Semantic Web. Second, we provide a first evaluation of the system, which in addition to providing data about PowerAqua's competence, also gives us important insights into the issues related to using the Semantic Web as the target answer set in Question Answering. In particular, we show that, despite the problems related to the noisy and incomplete conceptualizations, which can be found on the Semantic Web, good results can already be obtained.

Semantic search meets the Web

While semantic search technologies have been proven to work well in specific domains, they still have to confront two main challenges to scale up to the Web in its entirety. In this work we address this issue with a novel semantic search system that a) provides the user with the capability to query Semantic Web information using natural language, by means of an ontology-based Question Answering (QA) system [14] and b) complements the specific answers retrieved during the QA process with a ranked list of documents from the Web [3]. Our results show that ontology-based semantic search capabilities can be used to complement and enhance keyword search technologies.

AquaLog : an ontology-driven question answering system for organizational semantic intranets

The semantic web vision is one in which rich, ontology-based semantic markup will become widely available. The availability of semantic markup on the web opens the way to novel, sophisticated forms of question answering. AquaLog is a portable question-answering system which takes queries expressed in natural language and an ontology as input, and returns answers drawn from one or more knowledge bases (KBs). We say that AquaLog is portable because the configuration time required to customize the system for a particular ontology is negligible. AquaLog presents an elegant solution in which different strategies are combined together in a novel way. It makes use of the GATE NLP platform, string metric algorithms, WordNet and a novel ontology-based relation similarity service to make sense of user queries with respect to the target KB. Moreover it also includes a learning component, which ensures that the performance of the system improves over the time, in response to the particular community jargon used by end users.

Relation discovery from web data for competency management

In current organizations, valuable enterprise knowledge is often buried under rapidly expanding huge amount of unstructured information in the form of web pages, blogs, and other forms of human text communications. We present a novel unsupervised machine learning method called CORDER (COmmunity Relation Discovery by named Entity Recognition) to turn these unstructured data into structured information for knowledge management in these organizations. CORDER exploits named entity recognition and co-occurrence data to associate individuals in an organization with their expertise and associates. We discuss the problems associated with evaluating unsupervised learners and report our initial evaluation experiments in an expert evaluation, a quantitative benchmarking, and an application of CORDER in a social networking tool called BuddyFinder.

PowerAqua:fishing the semantic web

The Semantic Web (SW) offers an opportunity to develop novel, sophisticated forms of question answering (QA). Specifically, the availability of distributed semantic markup on a large scale opens the way to QA systems which can make use of such semantic information to provide precise, formally derived answers to questions. At the same time the distributed, heterogeneous, large-scale nature of the semantic information introduces significant challenges. In this paper we describe the design of a QA system, PowerAqua, designed to exploit semantic markup on the web to provide answers to questions posed in natural language. PowerAqua does not assume that the user has any prior information about the semantic resources. The system takes as input a natural language query, translates it into a set of logical queries, which are then answered by consulting and aggregating information derived from multiple heterogeneous semantic sources.

ClaiMaker : weaving a semantic web of research papers

The usability of research papers on the Web would be enhanced by a system that explicitly modelled the rhetorical relations between claims in related papers. We describe ClaiMaker, a system for modelling readers’ interpretations of the core content of papers. ClaiMaker provides tools to build a Semantic Web representation of the claims in research papers using an ontology of relations. We demonstrate how the system can be used to make inter-document queries.

Developments in technologies for human-centric mobile computing and applications

With recent expansions in technology, mobile computing continues to play a vital role in all aspects of our lives. Digital technology tools such as Web browsing, media tracking, social media, and emailing have made mobile technology more than just a means of communication but has widespread use in business and social networks. Developments in Technologies for Human-Centric Mobile Computing and Applications is a comprehensive collection of knowledge and practice in the development of technologies in human –centric mobile technology. This book focuses on the developmental aspects of mobile technology; bringing together researchers, educators, and practitioners to encourage readers to think outside of the box.

Software for Expert Information Processing During Carrying out the Examinations

The system of the automated carrying out of examinations is described. Opportunities of system, its architecture and structure of communications between functional subsystems are resulted. Features of the subsystems making system are described. Types of questions which can be used at carrying out of examination are listed. In the near future the working version of system will be ready to input in commercial operation.

Lecturer’s Web-site and its Role in Distance Learning

Structure of University lecturer’s web-site is suggested. A need for higher education system hyperspace is demonstrated.

Design Standardized Web-Components for e-Learning

In this paper a flexible approach to design LMS with QTI Ready component based on the e-Learning standards AICC and IMS QTI is described. This system and component permits a dynamic learning and assessment process. QTI Ready component can provide these facilities to other real world virtual learning management system.

An Intelligent System for Investigations and Provision of Safety for Complex Constructions

Methodology of computer-aided investigation and provision of safety for complex constructions and a prototype of the intelligent applied system, which implements it, are considered. The methodology is determined by the model of the object under scrutiny, by the structure and functions of investigation of safety as well as by a set of research methods. The methods are based on the technologies of object-oriented databases, expert systems and on the mathematical modeling. The intelligent system’s prototype represents component software, which provides for support of decision making in the process of safety investigations and investigation of the cause of failure. Support of decision making is executed by analogy, by determined search for the precedents (cases) with respect to predicted (on the stage of design) and observed (on the stage of exploitation) parameters of the damage, destruction and malfunction of a complex hazardous construction.

Analysis and Coordination of Expert Statements in the Problems of Intellectual Information Search

* This work was financially supported by RFBF-04-01-00858.

Software Development for Distributed System of Russian Databases for Electronics Materials

Current state of Russian databases for substances and materials properties was considered. A brief review of integration methods of given information systems was prepared and a distributed databases integration approach based on metabase was proposed. Implementation details were mentioned on the posed database on electronics materials integration approach. An operating pilot version of given integrated information system implemented at IMET RAS was considered.

MPEG-7 Based Image Retrieval on the World Wide Web

Due to the rapid growth of the number of digital media elements like image, video, audio, graphics on Internet, there is an increasing demand for effective search and retrieval techniques. Recently, many search engines have made image search as an option like Google, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Freenet. In addition to this, Ditto, Picsearch, can search only the images on Internet. There are also other domain specific search engines available for graphics and clip art, audio, video, educational images, artwork, stock photos, science and nature [www.faganfinder.com/img]. These entire search engines are directory based. They crawls the entire Internet and index all the images in certain categories. They do not display the images in any particular order with respect to the time and context. With the availability of MPEG-7, a standard for describing multimedia content, it is now possible to store the images with its metadata in a structured format. This helps in searching and retrieving the images. The MPEG-7 standard uses XML to describe the content of multimedia information objects. These objects will have metadata information in the form of MPEG-7 or any other similar format associated with them. It can be used in different ways to search the objects. In this paper we propose a system, which can do content based image retrieval on the World Wide Web. It displays the result in user-defined order.