Continuant Occurrent ' rContinuant Occurrent Object Process Schema Script Juncture Participation Description History Structure Situation Reason Purpose Three-dimensional matrix of twelve of Sowa's categories (p. 75).

The purpose of this paper is to defend the systematic introduction of formal ontological principles in the current practice of knowledge engineering, to explore the various relationships between ontology and knowledge representation, and to present the recent trends in this promising research area. According to the "modelling view" of knowledge acquisition proposed by Clancey, the modeling activity must establish a correspondence between a knowledge base and two separate subsystems: the agent's behavior (i.e. the problem-solving expertize) and its own environment (the problem domain). Current knowledge modelling methodologies tend to focus on the former subsystem only, viewing domain knowledge as strongly dependent on the particular task at hand: in fact, AI researchers seem to have been much more interested in the nature of reasoning rather than in the nature of the real world. Recently, however, the potential value of task-independent knowlege bases (or "ontologies") suitable to large scale integration has been underlined in many ways. In this paper, we compare the dichotomy between reasoning and representation to the philosophical distinction between epistemology and ontology. We introduce the notion of the ontological level, intermediate between the epistemological and the conceptual level discussed by Brachman, as a way to characterize a knowledge representation formalism taking into account the intended meaning of its primitives. We then discuss some formal ontological distinctions which may play an important role for such purpose.

One of the Internet’s greatest strengths is that it does not know or care what its applications are or what they are doing: it simply forwards data. Yet network users experience the network through the functioning and performance of applications. This divergence of perspective leads to a number of problems. For example, a user whose local DNS service has failed may perceive the network as broken, even though from a network perspective, data continues to flow correctly. If an email server or a Web server fails, the user will say the network is broken; the network operator will say the network is fine. We need a way to make the network more aware of itself and its applications, without destroying the open and transparent data plane. To meet this need we propose the creation of an Internet knowledge plane. The knowledge plane is a distributed and decentralized construct within the network that gathers, aggregates, and manages information about network behavior and operation, and provides an integrated view to all parties (operators, users, and the network itself). The goal is to enlarge our view of what constitutes the network to match the intuition of a user, and to enhance our ability to manage the network intelligently, without disturbing the open and unknowing forwarding plane. The knowledge plane is intelligent: it can reason about the network’s behavior and act upon the results of its reasoning. It can remember and learn from past behavior. To achieve that goal, we propose to adapt and employ recent work in cognition such as the separation of algorithm, policy and goals, and new models for knowledge representation.

Abstract: This paper describes an approach to capturing organisational memory, which serves to ground an analysis of human issues that knowledge management (KM) technologies raise. In the approach presented, teams construct graphical webs of the arguments and documents relating to key issues they are facing. This supports collaborative processes which are central to knowledge work, and provides a group memory of this intellectual investment. This approach emphasises the centrality of negotiation in making interdisciplinary decisions in a changing environment. Discussion in the paper focuses on key human dimensions to KM technologies, including the cognitive and group dynamics set up by an approach, the general problem of preserving contextual cues, and the political dimensions to formalising knowledge processes and products. These analyses strongly motivate the adoption of participatory design processes for KM systems. Key Words: organisational memory, knowledge management, argumentation, participatory design, knowledge-based systems, collaborative systems

When building intelligent spaces, the knowledge representation for encapsulating rooms, users, groups, roles, and other information is a fundamental design question. Here we present a semantic network as such a representation, and demonstrate its utility as a basis for ongoing work.

The software and knowledge engineering literature defines maintenance strategies for seven main types of knowledge: words; sentences; behavioural knowledge; and meta-knowledge. Meta-knowledge divides into problem solving methods; quality knowledge; fix knowledge; social knowl- 5 edge; and processing activities. There are five main ways in which these seven knowledge types are processed: acquire; operationalise; fault; fix; and preserve. We review systems that contribute to these 7 5 = 35 types of knowledge maintenance. 1 Introduction 10 A general trend in the twentieth century is an increasing level of doubt about the things we speak or write or try to enter into programs. Popper argues that all knowledge is an hypothesis since nothing can ever be ultimately proved; Submitted to the Knowledge Engineering Review page 2 of 73 our currently believed ideas are merely those that have survive active attempts to refute them [89]. Knowledge representation theorists stress that KBs are...

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An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are designed for maximum reusability. Van Heijst et. al. suggested that a central part of ontology libraries is the definition of what they called a core ontology, containing elements that are as generic and method-independent as possible. However, their specification of how these core ontologies should be constructed is highly pragmatical, and leaves many problems unresolved. In this article we propose and discuss a number of specific principles for the construction of core ontologies. We demonstrate the advantages of these principles using as an example a core ontology we have built for the domain of law. Several conclusions about the construction of ontology libraries based on core ontologies are drawn. 1 Introduction An important issue in the newborn discipline of ontological engineering is the construction of libraries of ontologies which are desig...

The ontology of law that we present here is one `in between' a completely general top ontology and ontologies of legal domains. It adopts a functional perspective --- that is, the Law is analysed and interpreted through a functional point of view. We propose a number of primitive functions of legal sources and corresponding categories of legal knowledge: normative knowledge, world knowledge, responsibility knowledge, reactive knowledge, creative knowledge and meta-legal knowledge. Together, these functions realize the main function of the legal system: to regulate social behaviour. The

Abstract: Domain-Specific Visual Modeling Languages should provide notations and abstractions that suitably support problem solving in well-defined application domains. From their user’s perspective, the language’s modeling primitives must be intuitive and expressive enough in capturing all intended aspects of domain conceptualizations. Over the years formal and explicit representations of domain conceptualizations have been developed as domain ontologies. In this paper, we show how the design of these languages can benefit from conceptual tools developed by the ontology engineering community. 1.