Research activities

• The semi-automatic generation of ontologies, e.g. through the use of Knowledge Discovery techniques. (Leader is the Josef Stefan Institute.)
• The semi-automatic extraction of metadata, e.g. through the use of Human Language Technology. (This work is led by the University of Sheffield.)
• Ontology and metadata management, focusing on an integrated management of ontology and metadata evolution, led by the University of Karlsruhe. It will include a component on reasoning, in particular reasoning across distributed heterogeneous knowledge bases from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
• Ontology mediation, which is concerned with merging and aligning different ontologies, led by the University of Innsbruck.

These core technologies are combined to achieve synergy effects. Each technology is a key part of (semi)automatic ontology creation and maintenance, which can be split into 3 phases: ontology creation; metadata extraction; ontology maintenance. Each of the technologies will be realised as software modules which will interoperate by using emerging WWW standards, e.g. RDF, RDFS, and OWL. Knowledge discovery technology will be applied to knowledge repositories in order to generate ontologies. Human language technology will be applied to the same knowledge repositories to extract metadata to populate these ontologies. Ontology management technology will then be used to maintain, extend and evolve these technologies.

Tool development and systems integration

• Knowledge access. This activity develops context-aware tools for users to access semantically-annotated knowledge. The tools will use visualisation techniques to make user-interaction with knowledge more effective. Visualisation techniques for semantically-enabled knowledge will be a research theme within SEKT. The activity is led by BT.
• Integration. This activity will integrate the technology being developed in the research activities into a range of interoperable software products. The integration activity is led by Empolis. Other industrial members of the consortium contribute to this activity and develop prototype tools.

Methodology development

Methodology development includes technical and management guidelines for the introduction of semantically-enabled knowledge systems into an organisation. This activity is led by the University of Karlsruhe, and is closely linked to the case studies. Together with the activity on usability and benchmarking the methodology guides the iterative development of the SEKT technology, thus intermediating between technology providers and case study partners.

Case studies

• A number of case studies are undertaken in knowledge-rich sectors in both commercial and public organisations. The primary objective of these is to apply the technologies and feed back lessons learned into the tool development process. A secondary objective is to provide material and showcases for disseminating information about benefits of the semantically-enabled approach to knowledge management:
  • Usability, optimisation of business benefits and benchmarking. This activity will establish a framework for the case studies, and for a comparative analysis of their results. The activity is led by Kea-pro.
  • A case study in the IT industry which will in particular look at knowledge sharing for the support of business processes across large organisations. This activity is led by Empolis.
  • A case study in the legal domain will look in particular at how semantically-enabled knowledge management can provide decision support to specialists in a non-IT domain. It is led by iSOCO.
  • A case study in the telecommunications industry which will in particular address how to reduce the overhead on knowledge workers of creating and using semantically-annotated knowledge. This activity is led by BT.

Each case study is designed to capture a different aspect of using sematic knowledge technology, hence each case study will feed different insights the technology development and the methodology. The case study in the legal domain will in particular examine how the technology can be used to provide decision support in complex and critical situations; the case study in the telecoms industry will examine how to minimise the overheads of knowledge creation and maintenance; and the case study in the media industry will examine how to use the technology with heterogeneous groups of users.