Marian Mach

Towards Semantic Modelling of Business Processes for Networked Enterprises

The paper presents an approach to the semantic modelling and annotation of business processes and information resources, as it was designed within the FP7 ICT EU project SPIKE to support creation and maintenance of short-term business alliances and networked enterprises. A methodology for the development of the resource ontology, as a shareable knowledge model for semantic description of business processes, is proposed. Systematically collected user requirements, conceptual models implied by the selected implementation platform as well as available ontology resources and standards are employed in the ontology creation. The process of semantic annotation is described and illustrated using an example taken from a real application case.

Semantically-enhanced extension of the discussion analysis algorithm in SAKE

In this article we describe an approach for semantic-based analysis of discussions within semantic-based groupware system (GWS) in SAKE project. SAKE (semantic agile knowledge-based e-government) is a STREP Project sponsored by the European Union starting March in 2006. The overall objective of SAKE is to specify, develop and deploy a holistic framework and supporting tools for an agile knowledge-based e-government that will be sufficiently flexible to adapt to changing and diverse environments and needs. We give a brief overview of the approach that will be applied for evaluation of discussion, discussions threads and discussion posts. Part of the approach is also an analysis of the discussants regarding positive or negative reactions on their contributions, extended by usage of concepts from argumentation ontology. Main goal is to identify some rating of the users involved in the discussion and support moderators in evaluation of discussion result and/or identify discussants skills useful for another similar case discussion.

Open Collaboration in Policy Development: Concept and Architecture to Integrate Scenario Development and Formal Policy Modelling

Along the demands for good governance and open government, policymakers need concise, reliable and up-to-date information to respond to society’s problems and affairs in an efficient and effective way. Likewise, stakeholders affected by a particular policy call for transparency, accountability and trustworthiness in political decision-making. Along the evolution of information society that leads to increasing digitisation of information and knowledge artefacts and public services, citizens more and more request direct involvement in policymaking. In this chapter, we introduce a comprehensive and innovative approach to collaborative policy development. The approach integrates collaborative scenario building and formal policy modelling via an integrated ICT toolbox. Stakeholders are collaboratively involved in the scenario development as well as in the evaluation of simulation outcomes. To bridge the gap between narrative texts of stakeholder-generated scenarios (evidenced through background documents of the policy to be discussed) and formal policy models (generating model-based scenarios), the approach introduces conceptual modelling, which enables the different stakeholders to better understand the policy context and to support semi-automatic transformation of text statements into formal statements and agent descriptions. A consequence of the agent-based modelling approach used is that the justifications for expectations of the stakeholders are made precise, explicit and linked to evidence, and this process provides for the monitoring of ongoing policy implementation.

First Trials in Webocracy

The Webocracy project aims to empower citizens with innovative communication, access and polling system, supporting increased participation in democratic processes. One of the main project goals is to develop an open source web-based system called Webocrat as a multi-channel communication platform supporting e-government and e-democracy applications. Some of the Webocrat modules were tested in first trial of our two pilot applications, one of them running in Wolverhampton, UK and the other one in Kosice, Slovakia. Currently, whole integrated Webocrat system is being tested within the second trials.

Employing Semantic Technologies for the Orchestration of Government Services

The main aim of the eGovernment is to provide efficient, secure, inclusive services for its citizens and businesses. The necessity to integrate services and information resources, to increase accessibility, to reduce the administrative burden on citizens and enterprises – these are only a few reasons why the paradigm of the eGovernment has been shifted from the supply-driven approach toward the connected governance, emphasizing the concept of interoperability (Archmann and Nielsen 2008). On the EU level, the interoperability is explicitly addressed as one of the four main challenges, including in the i2010 strategy (i2010 2005). The Commission’s Communication (Interoperability for Pan-European eGovernment Services 2006) strongly emphasizes the necessity of interoperable eGovernment services, based on standards, open specifications, and open interfaces. The Pan-European interoperability initiatives, such as the European Interoperability Framework (2004) and IDABC, as well as many projects supported by the European Commission within the IST Program and the Competitiveness and Innovation Program (CIP), illustrate the importance of interoperability on the EU level.

Knowledge enhanced e-government portal

There is a growing number of e-Government portals and solutions available today. But what the users lack in particular is a customised assistance - help that meets the individual situation and competence [13]. In this paper, a system called Webocrat will be presented as an attempt to shift e-Government portals toward this direction, providing knowledge management strategy as its basis [11]. The Webocrat system applies a knowledge-based approach [5]. Information of all kinds produced by various modules is linked to a shared ontology representing an application domain. Such ontology serves as a means for structuring and organizing available information resulting in improved search capability and contents presentation.

Usage of ZCS Evolutionary Classifier System as a Rule Maker for Cleaning Robot Task

This paper introduces the Cleaning robot task which is a simulation of the cleaning of a room by a robot. The robot must collect all the junk in the room and put it into a container. It must take out the junk sequentially, because the amount of carried trash is limited. The actions of this robot are selected by using the Michigan style classifier system ZCS. This paper shows the capability of this system to select good rules for the robot to perform the cleaning task.

Design of a system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes

The paper describes a design of system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes in electronic governance. The policy modelling processes, as complex and knowledge intensive activities, combine collaborative creation and analysis of narrative scenarios with agent-based simulation. The proposed architecture will support collaborative approach to the policy modelling (i.e. enhance the modelling processes by collective intelligence). A scope of the proposed system will be specified and platform architecture components, including some practical details regarding their implementation, will be described.

Control of agents in a multi-agent system using ZCS evolutionary classifier systems

The paper shows the usage of ZCS evolutionary systems in a multi-agent system where each agent is controlled with a different classifier system. This approach was tested on the cleaning robot task with multiple robots cleaning the room. Each robot has like in the original cleaning robot task a limited amount of carried trash and when the robots stack is full he must go to a container and take out the junk.

Demo application supporting smart grid control

The energy market is inherently incomplete and imperfectly competitive mainly due to the characteristics and special nature of the commodity of electric energy. To be able to control distribution grid in the condition of not elastic demand and continuously changing structure of the supply taking into account possible failures of supplies and also the fact that the supply of renewable energy sources (RES) can be poorly predicted, requires new mechanisms for flexible demand management. Such mechanism of grid control will be outcome of the international R&Đ project INERTIA that is funded by the EC within EU 7th Framework Programme, which is aimed at Smart Grids with the use of knowledge technologies. The semantic technologies were employed for several purposes. Semantic models were used for modelling of static data/time-independent data. Time-dependent data representing events are annotated to the semantic models. This enables the system to filter, compute and enrich the event data and present them via GUI of a decision support system to operators. A demo application has been developed by the authors. It illustrates the usage of the semantic data models in the decision support system giving a sample mechanism to control the demand side of the electric grid. The demo application and the overall approach adopted in the INERTIA system are presented in this paper.