About

The essential aspect of knowledge modelling, which distinguished it from the broader area of knowledge representation, was its focus on knowledge—i.e., competence—at a level that abstracted from implementation-level structures. For instance, a knowledge model of an engineering design application focused on problem-solving behaviour and the knowledge required to solve the application—e.g., how design extensions and modifications were carried out—rather than on implementation-level mechanisms for speeding up problem-solving—e.g., how to optimise data encoding and retrieval.

Knowledge modelling technologies—in particular, problem-solving methods and ontologies—were relevant to many disciplines, including knowledge engineering, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge management. At KMI, we developed a number of technologies for knowledge modelling. These included:

  • A modelling language, OCML, which supported the specification of ontologies and problem-solving methods, as well as the rapid prototyping of knowledge bases and application models.
  • A web-based editor, Web-Onto, which allowed users to browse and collaboratively develop knowledge models over the World Wide Web. Web-Onto was accessible through standard web browsers.
  • A library of reusable components for building domain and problem-solving models, which was accessible through the Web-Onto tool.
  • IRS, a prototype web-based tool that supported the development and execution of application knowledge bases by configuring and populating knowledge models from the OCML library.

These technologies were developed as part of several collaborative research projects, including IBROW, HC-REMA, and PatMan.

An important application area for these technologies was knowledge management. Knowledge management was roughly characterised as the problem of identifying the personal and collective knowledge existing in an organisation and making it available to the relevant people. Our approach used ontologies to enrich document archives, drive the knowledge acquisition process, and support the development of organisational knowledge bases. Additionally, we developed tools to support integrated access to formal knowledge bases and documents and to enable intelligent search and deductive query answering. These ideas were investigated in several scenarios, including electronic publishing, scholarly discourse, medical guidelines, and organisational learning.

Projects

ScholOnto

PlanetOnto

I-brow

IRS

PatMan

HC-REMA

Enrich

RichODL

People

Enrico Motta

Simon Buckingham Shum

John Domingue

Martin Dzbor

Zdenek Zdrahal

Marek Hatala

Paul Mulholland

Arthur Stutt

Publications

Motta, E.(1999). Reusable Components for Knowledge Modelling. IOS Press, Amsterdam. November 1999.

DZBOR, M.: Intelligent Support for Problem Formalisation in Design. 3rd IEEE Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems (INES’99), Stara Lesna, Slovakia, November 1999 (in-press).

DZBOR, M.: Support for problem formalisation in engineering design: An enquiry into the role of knowledge-level models, 10th Int. DAAAM Symposium, Vienna, Austria, October 1999 (in-press).

Sumner, T., Domingue, J., Zdrahal, Z., Millican, A., Murray, J. (1999) Moving from On-the-job Training towards Organisational Learning. Proceedings of the 12th Banff Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 16-22, 1999.

Motta E., Buckingham-Shum, S. and Domingue, J. (1999). Ontology-Driven Document Enrichment: Principles and Case Studies. In Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling and Management (KAW ’99). Banff, Canada, October 16th – 21st, 1999.

Buckingham-Shum, S., Motta E. and Domingue, J. (1999). Representing Scholarly Claims in Internet Digital Libraries: A Knowledge Modelling Approach. In Serge Abiteboul and Anne-Marie Vercoustre (eds), Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Paris, France, September 22-24, 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag.

MACH, M. – DZBOR, M. – FURDIK, K. – PARALIC, J.: Organisational Memory – A Knowledge Modelling Approach. IIS 99, September 22-24, 1999, Varazdin, Croatia.

Fensel, D., Benjamins, V. R., Motta, E. and Wielinga, B. (1999). UPML: A Framework for knowledge system reuse. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI-99), Stockholm, Sweden, July 31 – August 5, 1999.

Motta, E., Fensel, D., Gaspari, M. and Benjamins, R. (1999). Specifications of Knowledge Components for Reuse. Eleventh International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE ’99). January 1999.

Domingue, J. B. and Motta, E. (1999). A Knowledge-Based News Server Supporting Ontology-Driven Story Enrichment and Knowledge Retrieval. 11th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling, and Management (EKAW ’99).

Motta, E.(1999). Reusable Components for Knowledge Modelling: Principles and Case Studies in Parametric Design. IOS Press, Amsterdam, 1999.

Sumner, T., Domingue, J. Zdrahal, Z., Hatala, M. Millican, A., Murray, J., Hinkelmann, K., Bernardi, A., Weiss, S., Traphoner, R.(1998) Enriching Representations of Work to Support Organisational Learning. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Building, Maintaining, and Using Organisational Memories (OM-98), 13th biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-98), August, 23th – 28th, Brighton, UK

Domingue J. (1998) Tadzebao and WebOnto: Discussing, Browsing, and Editing Ontologies on the Web. Proceedings of the 11th Banff Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Banff, Alberta, Canada, April 18-23, 1998.

Benjamins, V. R., Plaza, E., Motta, E., Fensel, D., Studer, R., Wielinga, B., Schreiber, G. and Zdrahal, Z. An Intelligent Brokering Service for Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World-Wide-Web. In Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling and Management (KAW98). Banff, Canada, April 18th – 23rd, 1998.

Motta, E. (1998) An Overview of the OCML Modelling Language. Paper presented at the 8th Workshop on Knowledge Engineering Methods and Languages (KEML ’98). Postscript version. January 1998.

Motta, E. and Zdrahal, Z. (1998). A library of problem-solving components based on the integration of the search paradigm with task and method ontologies. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 49(4), pp. 437-470.

Reprinted with minor modifications as: Negotiating the Construction of Organisational Memories, Borghoff, U.M. and Pareschi, R., (Eds.), Information Technology for Knowledge Management. Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1998, pp. 55-78.

Zdrahal, Z. and Domingue, J. (1997) The World Wide Design Lab: An Environment for Distributed Collaborative Design. 11th International Conference on Engineering Design, August, 19-21 1997, Tampere, Finland.

Motta, E. (1997). Trends in Knowledge Modelling: Report on the 7th KEML Workshop. The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 12(2), June 1997.

Stutt, A. (1997) Knowledge Engineering Ontologies, Constructivist Epistemology, Computer Rhetoric: A Trivium for the Knowledge Age. Proceedings of Ed-Media’97, June 1997, Calgary, Canada.

Buckingham Shum, S. (1997). Negotiating the Construction and Reconstruction of Organisational Memories Journal of Universal Computer Science (Special Issue on IT for Knowledge Management), 3 (8), 899-928.

Fensel, D., Motta, E., Decker, S., and Zdrahal, Z. (1997). The use of Ontologies for Specifying Tasks and Problem Solving Methods: A Case Study. 10th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling, and Management (EKAW 97).

Stutt, A. (1997). Knowledge Modelling using Knowledge Engineering Components. ICTE’97, Oslo, Norway.

Buckingham Shum, S., MacLean, A., Bellotti, V. and Hammond, N. (1997). Graphical Argumentation & Design Cognition. Human-Computer Interaction, 12 (3), 267-300.

Motta, E., O’Hara, K., Shadbolt, N., Stutt, A., and Zdrahal, Z. (1996). Solving VT in VITAL: A Study in Model Construction and Knowledge Reuse. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, vol. 44 (3-4). March-April 1996.

Brooking, A. and Motta, E. (1996). A Taxonomy of Intellectual Capital and a Methodology for Auditing it. 17th Annual National Business Conference. McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, January 1996.

Motta, E. and Zdrahal, Z. (1996). Parametric Design Problem Solving. Presented at the 10th Banff Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop.

Gaspari, M., Motta, E, and Stutt, A. (1995). An Open Framework for Cooperative Problem Solving. IEEE Expert, 10(3). June 1995.

Zdrahal, Z. and Motta E. (1995). An In-depth Analysis of Propose & Revise Problem Solving. Proceedings of the nineth Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop. Banff Canada, 26 February-3 March, 1995.

Domingue, J. (1995) Using Software Visualization Technology in the Validation of Knowledge Based Systems. Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop, Banff Canada, February 26-March 3, 1995.

Motta, E., and Zdrahal, Z. (1995). The Trouble with What: Issues in Method-Independent Task Specification. Proceedings of the 1995 Knowledge Acquisition Workshop. Banff, Canada, 26/2-3/3 1995.

Stutt, A. and Motta, E. (1995). Recording the design decisions of a knowledge engineering community to facilitate re-use of design models. Proceedings of the 1995 Knowledge Acquisition Workshop. Banff, Canada, 26/2-3/3 1995.

Domingue, J. (1995) Software Visualization Based KBS Validation. Proceedings of the 1995 EUROVAV workshop.

Gaspari, M., and Motta, E. (1994). Symbol-level Requirements for Agent-level Programming. 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI ’94. Amsterdam, August 1994.

Motta, E., O’Hara, K., and Shadbolt, N. Grounding GDMs: A Structured Case Study. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 40(2). March 1994.

Shadbolt, N, Motta, E., and Rouge, A. (1993). Constructing Knowledge-Based Systems. IEEE Software 10(6). November 1993.

Domingue, J. Motta, E., and Watt, S. (1993). The Emerging VITAL Workbench. In Aussenac et al. (eds). EKAW ’93 Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, LNCS 723, Springer-Verlag, 1993.

Gaspari, M., Motta, E, and Stutt, A.(1993). Inferring in Lego-land: an architecture for the integration of heterogeneous inference modules. In Torasso (ed), Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Art