Olga Nabuco

Ontology models of the impacts of agriculture and climate changes on water resources

Agriculture is both highly dependent on water resources, and impacting on these resources. Regardless of advances in the area, the impacts of water scarcity and climatic changes on agriculture, as well as the impacts of agriculture on water resources, remain uncertain. Potentially, collaborative systems can support the management and information sharing of multifaceted and large scale data sources, providing valuable and indispensable information for research. However, these solutions rely on semantic interoperability, the construction of complex knowledge representation models, as well as information recovery. This work describes interoperability issues in the engineering process of the OntoAgroHidro, an ontology that represents knowledge about impacts of agricultural activities and climatic changes on water resources. The paper presents representative scenarios and questions, and discusses the reuse and integration of concepts using knowledge visualization techniques. Experiments on the information recovery scenario point out the potential and limitations of the OntoAgroHidro. Describes interoperability issues in an ontology engineering process.Presents the design of a cross domain large ontology.Presents experiences of using the ontology in an information recovery scenario.Presents challenges and resources needed to work with domain specialists.

Ontology for Malware Behavior: A Core Model Proposal

The ubiquity of Internet-connected devices motivates attackers to create malicious programs (malware) to exploit users and their systems. Malware detection requires a deep understanding of their possible behaviors, one that is detailed enough to tell apart suspicious programs from benign, legitimate ones. A step to effectively address the malware problem leans toward the development of an ontology. Current efforts are based on an obsolete hierarchy of malware classes that defines a malware family by one single prevalent behavior (e.g., viruses infect other files, worms spread and exploit remote systems autonomously, Trojan horses disguise themselves as benign programs, and so on). In order to address the detection of modern, complex malware families whose infections involve sets of multiple exploit methods, we need an ontology broader enough to deal with these suspicious activities performed on the victims system. In this paper, we propose a core model for a novel malware ontology that is based on their exhibited behavior, filling a gap in the field.

Scientific Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in the Virtual Manufacturing Network

Abstract Most of past research efforts on Collaborative Work Support adopt tool-centric approaches to define cooperation. These approaches are often related to a single category of communication (synchronous or asynchronous) and support only a single type of collaboration (planned or open). In this paper, vc describe our view for successful collaboration in Virtual Manet. Our aim is to extend the classical asynchronous computer-supported scientific collaboration by introducing and integrating collaborative work support tools with knowledge management approaches. We are starting by effective requirements analysis, and we will continue by identifying the associated collaboration technologies, and finally defining the Cooperative e-Space integration architecture. The idea can be generalized to encompass the manufacturing business or the collaborative production in virtual enterprises.

An ontology of suspicious software behavior

–Malicious programs have been the main actors in complex, sophisticated attacks against nations, governments, diplomatic agencies, private institutions and people. Knowledge about malicious program behavior forms the basis for constructing more secure information systems. In this article, we introduce MBO, a Malicious Behavior Ontology that represents complex behaviors of suspicious executions, and through inference rules calculates their associated threat level for analytical proposals. We evaluate MBO using over two thousand unique known malware and 385 unique known benign software. Results highlight the representativeness of the MBO for expressing typical malicious activities. Security ontologyMalware behaviorThreat analysis

Special issue on Semantic Technologies for Collaborative Web

Collaborative systems have been evolving fast in the last decade. Nowadays, collaborative mechanisms are highly present on the Web, and collaboration can be seen as an inherent part of the Web essence. Numerous technologies, frameworks and development tools are nowon the field to facilitate the fast development of core communications mechanisms and the reuse of predefined components. In this context, research about collaborative systems has been shifting from technologies and theories about how to provide basic communication support, to complex computational and interactive solutions, which can elevate the Web to a provider of a new level of collaboration. In this perspective, and under the pressure of the commercial and organizational needs, a ‘‘fully’’ Collaborative Web today must entail the creation and maintenance of common layers where applications and people can share information, functionalities and services. Accordingly, collaborative systems are now wider than simple providers of data storage and communication functionalities, and encompass a new era of advanced technologies to assist human and computational agents in managing, discovering, visualizing and representing shared knowledge. Sharing knowledge on the Web is no longer restricted to a specific domain setting, and the role of Semantic Technologies in the CollaborativeWeb has becomemore relevant and widespread. This requires the investigation of different alternativemethods and dynamic techniques for knowledge representation, reuse and integration, as well as the construction of complex and yet manageable knowledge representationmodels. In turn, CollaborativeWeb Systems are evolving to cope with more flexible, distributed, adaptive, data intensive and quality-oriented environments and demand new approaches to knowledge representation models, reasoning and visualization methods, and semantic interoperability of agents, systems and organizations improvement. Aims The aim of this Special Issue on ‘‘Collaboration using the Semantic Web’’ is to report recent research on Semantic Technologies forWeb-enhanced collaboration and to present papers related to advances in improving the quality of collaboration through the Web. The issue comprises researchworkswith significant theoretical and practical outcomes aswell as case studies presenting issues and solutions to implement existing knowledge engineering techniques, to structure knowledge, and to capture information from various Web resources.

Conceptualizing the impacts of agriculture on water resources: experiences and ontology engineering challenges

Water is no longer considered an unlimited resource. As a matter of fact, many studies have shown a recent increase of water scarcity. By far, the largest demand for water resources comes from agricultural activities. Various researchers from multidisciplinary fields address the impacts of agricultural activities on water resources, as well as the impacts from possible climatic changes. In this context, the Embrapas research network AgroHidro aims to support integration and information sharing among a range of institutions and researchers. In this paper, we present the first version of a Web Ontology to represent key aspects of this problem. The objective is to provide the basis for computational mechanisms in support of knowledge sharing and recovery, e.g., semantic search, text mining and visualization techniques. The paper also discusses the reuse and integration strategies, limitations, and challenges to be faced in the ontology engineering process.

Delivering Deep Health Information Using Clinical Eye

This paper introduces a web-based semantic tool that provides more detailed information about a term selected by the user of a web browser, the Clinical Eye. This tool was initially designed for the medical area of cardiology, which is still controversial in terms of vocabularies. Anontology has been developed as a reference base where those different vocabularies converge. The information supplied by the tool was taken from specialized medical web pages and technical documents. It is a tool of low interference for ongoing activities, so it can be used during a clinical activity. It has been designed according to requirements raised by studies in various medical communities, which pointed the use of Internet during consultations and medical needs for deep information.

Clinical Eye: A Tool for Augmented Browsing in the Health Domain

This paper introduces a web-based semantic tool that provides more detailed information about a term selected by the user of a web browser, the Clinical Eye. This tool was initially designed for the medical area of cardiology, which is still controversial in terms of vocabularies. An ontology has been developed as a reference base where those different vocabularies converge. The information supplied by the tool was taken from specialized medical web pages and technical documents. It is a tool of low interference for ongoing activities, so it can be used during a clinical activity. It has been designed according to requirements raised by studies in various medical communities which pointed the use of internet during consultations and medical needs for deep information.

Track Report of Modeling the Collaborative Web Knowledge (Web2Touch 2014)

The 2014 edition of the Web2Touch (W2T) Track aims at presenting alternatives to address interoperability and distributed knowledge management problem for Web systems. In particular, it provides a view on the field of secure and knowledge-intensive Web collaboration using semantic techniques to share experiences, challenges and opportunities, and to cope with frequent evolution of knowledge during cooperative processes based on the Web collaborative platform. Consequently, this year, W2T brings together applications, engineering issues, conceptual models and methods to provide a multidisciplinary view over knowledge organization systems based on the Web.

Web2Touch 2015 Track Report: Modeling the Collaborative Web Knowledge

This is the Web2Touch 2015 track report.