Vedran Hrgovcic

Conceptual Modeling of the Organisational Aspects for Distributed Applications: The Semantic Lifting Approach

Designing, deploying and managing distributed applications is a complex multi-layered and multi-dimensional task which may focus on different aspects. Organizational aspect depicts an important phase and a chance to reduce complexity in this phase may give virtual organization an edge over competitors in dynamic markets. In this paper we propose an application of the Semantic Lifting, a meta modeling based approach to semantically enrich the conceptual models of the organizational layer in order to support the merge of different meta models applied in the complex setting of distributed application scenarios.

Model driven design for e-applications: the meta model approach

This paper aims to answer the question, if a generic approach for Model-Driven Design of e-Applications exists. A proposal for generic approach on Model-Driven Design applied in different application scenarios for e-Government, e-Business and e-Learning is introduced. Identified solutions are presented by applying a top-down, inside-out or bottom-up approach utilizing the Modeling Method Specification Framework in order to conceptualize, implement and deploy scenario-specific model-driven design approaches that are either executed by machines or by humans. Focus of the paper is the common procedure to conceptualize Model-Driven Design for e-Applications.

Agents, Models and Semantic Integration in Support of Personal eHealth Knowledge Spaces

The advancements in healthcare practice have brought to the fore the need for flexible access to health-related information and created an ever-growing demand for the design, development and management of personalized knowledge spaces. In this paper, we present a web-based platform that generates a Personal eHealth Knowledge Space as an aggregation of several knowledge sources relevant for the provision of individualized personal services. To this end, novel technologies are exploited, such as knowledge on demand to lower the information overload for the end-users, agent-based communication and reasoning to support cooperation and decision making, and semantic integration to provide uniform access to heterogeneous information. All three different technologies are combined to create a novel web-based platform allowing seamless user interaction through a portal that supports personalized, granular and secure access to relevant information.

Enhancing Semantic E-Government Workflows through Service Oriented Knowledge Provision

This paper follows two goals, first, to provide an insight on the research in the area of semantic workflows for public administrations, and second to present an on-demand service oriented approach on knowledge provisioning for actors in the E-Government processes. Results of the research in the area of semantic workflows will be presented in application scenarios of two EC E-Government research projects, whereas the knowledge provisioning approach will be presented conceptually within an EC E-Learning research project, and as an initial prototype in the EC Business Grids research project.

Knowledge Product Modelling for Industry: The PROMOTE Approach

Abstract Modelling Knowledge is a necessity in case computer supported processing is applied. Hence the different level of formalisms for knowledge models and the resulting different application areas are discussed since the early stages of knowledge engineering and knowledge management. The cost and benefit calculation of the effort in modelling and the return on investment when applying processing on the models is still an unsolved challenge. The modelling element “Knowledge Product” is introduced by the modelling language PROMOTE® that enables a pragmatic, concrete and quick modelling of knowledge in enterprises. After this step, different KM scenarios for knowledge scorecards, process-orientation, skill management or knowledge-based infrastructure can be realized. This paper introduces the overall model-based approach and focuses on the Knowledge Product element before introducing some lessons learned from research, teaching and commercial projects.

Business Episodes and Workflow Integration: A Use Case in LD-CAST

The integration of the business and technical views allows domain experts from the business view to take control over the whole process of service delivery (including the generation of the executable workflows) to the end users. The integration approach of business and technical views presented in this paper is supported by semi-automatic generation of ontology from the modeled business episodes. This approach is evaluated and presented through the use case example from the LD-CAST project (FP6-ICT-26919).

Service Modeling: A Model Based Approach for Business and It Alignment

Service modeling became important in the recent years, due to successful uptake of the SOA based environments and business models, pushed forward by overall growth of the service sector as a leading part of the worldwide economy. Service modeling gained importance based on the requirement to better understand, define and control the services as basic building blocks of the SOA based environments. This paper proposes a model driven approach on how the Business and IT alignment in the service life cycle can be supported by introducing knowledge technologies for service models. The model based approach is presented by first introducing the conceptual research challenges for integrated modeling methods, followed by the overview of the prototypic implementation of the service modeling platform and concludes with a demonstration in the HPC-based HLRS use case.

Personal eHealth Knowledge Spaces though Models, Agents and Semantics

In this paper, we present a web-based platform that generates a Personal eHealth Knowledge Space as an aggregation of several knowledge sources relevant for the provision of individualized personal services. To this end, novel technologies are exploited and demonstrated, such as knowledge on demand to lower the information overload for the end-users, agent-based communication and reasoning to support cooperation and decision making, and semantic integration to provide uniform access to heterogeneous information. All three technologies are combined to create a novel web-based platform allowing seamless user interaction through a portal that supports personalized, granular and secure access to relevant information. We demonstrate the portal and then the aforementioned technologies using real medical scenarios.

Cooperative Decision Making in Virtual Enterprises

Virtual enterprises provide an environment where flexible production and corresponding service delivery is cooperatively and efficiently carried out by involved stakeholders focused on utilizing their core competences. This unarguably promising approach raises many challenges – in this paper we focus on two. First we investigate how hybrid modelling approach can be applied to design amalgamated meta models covering artefacts required by the stakeholders within such a distributed environment – e.g. to design a distributed value chain. Second we propose how insights from other domains such as eHealth can be applied to solve the cooperative decision making challenge – e.g. fundamental due to having more than one process owner. We elaborate on three possible realization scenarios and select one to investigate how the previously designed meta model has to be extended to apply the proposed solution.

Modeling knowledge: an open models approach

Processing knowledge is a prominent field of research and -- after the knowledge management hype a decade ago -- also in business domain. We observe two main trends, although not explicitly distinguishable. First the knowledge engineering approaches focusing on machine interpretable knowledge and second the knowledge management approaches that center on human interpretable knowledge. It is proven that both approaches can be supported by models, for knowledge engineering more formalized knowledge expressions and for knowledge management also informal knowledge expressions. The Open Knowledge Model (OKM) project on Open Models aims to bring these two communities together by applying an open model-based approach for modeling knowledge. A first prototype has been developed in the project plugIT. This paper will introduce the approach, the findings and provide an outlook on OKM.