Ontolog invited Speaker Presentation - Mr. Jack Park & Dr. Patrick Durusau - Thu 2006-04-27    (MWS)

Conference Call Details    (MWT)

Attendees    (MXB)

Background    (MXJ)

This is the 3rd event in the series of talks and discussions the revolve around the topic: "Ontologizing the Ontolog Body of Knowledge" during which their community will explore the "what's" and "how's" to the development of a semantically interoperable application, using the improved access to the content of Ontolog as a case in point.    (MXK)

Agenda & Proceedings    (MXL)

http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/JackPark-PatrickDurusau_20060427/JackPark_20060427.png [picture of Mr. Jack Park] . . http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/JackPark-PatrickDurusau_20060427/PatrickDurusau_20060427.png [picture of Dr. Patrick Durusau]    (MXN)

Abstract: (by JackPark & PatrickDurusau)    (MXO)

Most users of ontologies have either participated in the development of the ontology they use and/or have used it for such a period of time that they have taken ownership of it. Like a hand that grows to fit a tool, users grow comfortable with "their" ontology and can use another only with difficulty and possibly high error rates.    (MXP)

When agencies discuss sharing information, the tendency is to offer other participants a "Hobson's Choice" of ontologies. "Of course we will use ontology X." which just happens to be the ontology of the speaker. Others make similar offers. Much discussion follows. But not very often effective integration of information.    (MXQ)

In all fairness to the imagined participants in such a discussion, unfamiliar ontologies can lead to errors and/or misunderstandings that may actually impede the interchange, pardon, the accurate interchange information. Super-ontologies don't help much when they lack the granularity needed for real tasks and simply put off the day of reckoning when actual data has to move between agencies.    (MXR)

The Topic Maps Reference Model is a paradigm for constructing a mapping of ontologies that enables users to use "their" ontologies while integrating information that may have originated in ontologies that are completely foreign or even unknown to the user. Such mappings can support full auditing of the process of integrating information to enable users to develop a high degree of confidence in the mapping.    (MXS)

Topic maps rely upon the fact that every part of an ontology is in fact representing a subject. And the subject that is being represented is known from the properties of those representatives. Such representatives are called subject proxies in the Topic Maps Reference Model. Those properties are used as the basis for determining when two or more subject proxies represent the same subject. Information from two or more representatives of the same subject can be merged together, providing users with information about a subject that may not have been known in their ontology.    (MXT)

Park and Durusau explore the philosophical, theoretical and practical steps needed to avoid a Hobson's Choice in ontology discussions and to use the Topic Maps Reference Model to effectively integrate information with a high degree of confidence in the results. All while enabling users to use the ontology that is most familiar and comfortable for them.    (MXU)

Mr. Jack Park is a research scientist in the AI Laboratory at SRI, International in Menlo Park. He works with Adam Cheyer's integration team on the DARPA-funded CALO project, where he created the prototype from which the team evolved the IRIS desktop knowledge workstation. During employment with VerticalNet, Park served on the XTM Authoring Committee which created the XTM topic maps specification, now a part of the ISO 13250 Topic Maps standard. In a former life, while serving as the president of the American Wind Energy Association, Park was constructing microprocessor-based weather stations used for siting wind energy farms and in agricultural applications. The massive amounts of data being collected by those stations led to investigations into AI applications in data mining and data organization. Ontologies and inference engines naturally followed. Park has crafted Java-based inference engines for a large banking enterprise, a clinical informatics enterprise, and participated in the construction of the VerticalNet B2B ontology editor. Park authored _The Wind Power Book_ in 1981, and co-authored and edited _XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web_, published in 2002. He has taught university courses in renewable energy resources in the U.S., and lectured on those subjects in the U.S., parts of Europe and Africa. He spends most of his time now evolving applications for subject maps related to the Douglas Engelbart call for continuous improvement of human capabilities.    (MY2)

Dr. Patrick Durusau is the Chair of V1, the US Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, the committee responsible for the development of the Topic Maps family of standards. He is a co-editor of ISO 13250-5, the Topic Maps Reference Model. . . . In the Fall of 2006 he will be teaching what is thought to be the first graduate course devoted exclusively to topic maps at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. . . . He is deeply interested in the integration diverse information systems (including ontologies) while preserving the ability of users to identify the subjects of their conversations in ways that work best for them.    (MYP)

Session Recording of the JackPark-PatrickDurusau Talk    (MYB)

 (Thanks to KurtConrad, BobSmith and PeterYim for their help with getting the session recorded.  =ppy)    (MYC)