Yun-Heh Chen-Burger

Enacting the distributed business workflows using BPEL4WS on the multi-agent platform

This paper describes the development of a distributed multi-agent workflow enactment mechanism using the BPEL4WS[1] specification. It demonstrates that a multi-agent protocol (Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC)[8]) can be used to interpret a BPEL4WS specification to enable distributed business workflow[5] using web services[2] composition on the multi-agent platform. The key difference between our system and other existing multi-agent based web services composition systems is that with our approach, a business process model(system requirement) can be adopted directly in the multi-agent system, thus reduce the effort on the validation and verification of the interaction protocol (system specification). This approach also provides us with a lightweight way of re-design of large component based systems.

Automatic fish classification for underwater species behavior understanding

The aim of this work is to propose an automatic fish classification system that operates in the natural underwater environment to assist marine biologists in understanding subehavior. Fish classification is performed by combining two types of features: 1) Texture features extracted by using statistical moments of the gray-level histogram, spatial Gabor filtering and properties of the co-occurrence matrix and 2) Shape Features extracted by using the Curvature Scale Space transform and the histogram of Fourier descriptors of boundaries. An affine transformation is also applied to the acquired images to represent fish in 3D by multiple views for the feature extraction. The system was tested on a database containing 360 images of ten different species achieving as average correct rate of about 92%. Then, fish trajectories extracted using the proposed fish classification combined with a tracking system, are analyzed in order to understand anomalous behavior. In detail, the tracking layer computer fish trajectories, the classification layer associates trajectories to fish species and then by clustering these trajectories we are able to detect unusual fish behaviors to be further investigated by marine biologists.

Towards Improving Supply Chain Coordination through Agent-Based Simulation

One of the most significant paradigm shifts of modern business management is that individual businesses no longer compete as autonomous entities but rather as supply chains. However, the majority of companies, especially small and medium enterprises, fail to design and manage their supply chains in a profitable way, as it is difficult to understand the complex dynamics of Supply Chain Management (SCM). In this paper we argue that agent technologies can provide an intelligent solution to the improvement of SCM. We present a multiagent-based framework for simulating supply chain (SC) operation and re-configuration, with the vision of helping to improve overall SC performance and coordination. The suggested key innovation lies in the better explanation of simulation results and its attractiveness to SCM practitioners. Its theoretical conceptualisation, a logic-based formalisation and the system’s architecture that combines agent technologies with business rules and business process modelling are presented.

Collaboration in the Semantic Grid: A Basis for e-Learning

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge-based tools that have been deployed to augment exiting collaborative environments, and the ontology that is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking, and aid navigation of resources before, after, and during a collaboration. While the primary focus of the project has been supporting e-Science, this paper also explores the similarities and application of CoAKTinG technologies as part of a human-centered design approach to e-Learning.

Models of Interaction as a Grounding for Peer to Peer Knowledge Sharing

Most current attempts to achieve reliable knowledge sharing on a large scale have relied on pre-engineering of content and supply services. This, like traditional knowledge engineering, does not by itself scale to large, open, peer to peer systems because the cost of being precise about the absolute semantics of services and their knowledge rises rapidly as more services participate. We describe how to break out of this deadlock by focusing on semantics related to interaction and using this to avoid dependency on a priori semantic agreement; instead making semantic commitments incrementally at run time. Our method is based on interaction models that are mobile in the sense that they may be transferred to other components, this being a mechanism for service composition and for coalition formation. By shifting the emphasis to interaction (the details of which may be hidden from users) we can obtain knowledge sharing of sufficient quality for sustainable communities of practice without the barrier of complex meta-data provision prior to community formation.

I-Room: A Virtual Space for Intelligent Interaction

The I-Room is a virtual environment intended to support a range of collaborative activities, especially those that involve sense making, deliberation, and decision making. The I-Room case studies described in this paper all employ virtual worlds technology to provide this interaction space and show how this can be augmented with external knowledge-based and intelligent systems.

A novel approach for enacting the distributed business workflows using BPEL4WS on the multi-agent platform

This paper describes the development of a distributed multi-agent workflow enactment mechanism using BPEL4WS specification. It demonstrates that a multi-agent protocol (lightweight coordination calculus (LCC)) can be used to interpret a BPEL4WS specification to enable distributed business workflow using Web services composition. The key difference between our system and other existing multi-agent based Web services composition systems is that with our approach, a business process model (system requirement) can be adopted directly in the multi-agent system, thus reduce the effort on the validation and verification of interaction protocol (system specification). This approach also provides us with a lightweight way of re-design of large components based system

FCA in Knowledge Technologies: Experiences and Opportunities

Managing knowledge is a difficult and slippery enterprise. A wide variety of technologies have to be invoked in providing support for knowledge requirements, ranging from the acquisition, modelling, maintenance, retrieval, reuse and publishing of knowledge. Any toolset capable of providing support for these would be valuable as its effects would percolate down to all the application domains structured around the domain representation. Given the generic structure of the lattice building algorithms in Formal Concept Analysis, we undertook a set of experiments to examine its potential utility in knowledge technologies. We elaborate on our experiences and speculate on the opportunities lying ahead for a larger uptake of Formal Concept Analysis approaches.

Formal Support for an Informal Business Modelling Method

Originally published in the International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Feb 2000.

Semantic-Based Workflow Composition for Video Processing in the Grid

We outline the problem of automatic video processing for the EcoGrid. This poses many challenges as there is a vast amount of raw data that need to be analysed effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, ecological data are subject to environmental changes and are exception-prone, hence their qualities vary. As manual processing by humans can be time and labour intensive, video and image processing tools can go some way to addressing such problems since they are computationally fast. However, most video analyses that utilise a combination of these tools are still done manually. We propose a semantic-based hybrid workflow composition method that strives to provide automation to speed up this process. The requirements for such a system are presented, whereby we aim for a solution that best satisfies these requirements and that overcomes the limitations of existing grid workflow composition systems