CAREER/EPSCoR: Cooperative Agents for Conceptual Search and Browsing of World Wide Web Resources

这个项目的目标有四个方面：（1）研究支持Web分布式搜索代理的方法;（2）评估基于本体的Web浏览代理的有效性;（3）研究Web可视化代理的使用;（4）记录本体的变化，以研究Web上的信息如何变化。这种方法有以下优点：首先，分布式搜索过程可以更公平地使用计算和网络资源，并允许搜索代理进行定制，以反映当地的利益和偏好。其次，基于本体的浏览代理允许更多的偶然访问Web资源。与当前的浏览结构（例如，Yahoo），这些浏览代理自动地将适当的资源与每个概念相关联。本体可以随着时间的推移在各个站点进行调整，从而允许浏览结构随着Web本身的发展而发展。第三，以更抽象的方式可视化大部分Web的能力允许用户快速获得可用信息类型的印象。第四，通过保持局部本体的变化历史，可以呈现局部和全局概念重要性的涨落。最后，本科生和研究生正在接触到一个真正的跨学科研究，通过他们参与一个长期的项目，结合了来自几个领域的专业知识，主要是计算机图形学，人工智能，分布式处理和信息科学。万维网（WWW）提供了对电子信息的无限制访问的承诺。然而，目前的现实是电子访问无限的无政府状态。这个项目是解决使用概念本体带来秩序的混乱。

The goals of this project are four-fold: (1) to investigate ways to support distributed searching agents for the Web; (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of ontology-based Web browsing agents; (3) to study the use of of visualization agents for the Web; and (4) to keep a record of changes to the ontology to study how information changes on the Web. This approach has the following advantages: First, distributing the search process makes more equitable use of computing and network resources and allows search agents to be customized to reflect local interests and preferences. Second, an ontology-based browsing agent allows for more serendipitous access to Web resources. Unlike the current browsing structures (e.g., Yahoo), these browsing agents associate appropriate resources with each concept automatically. The ontology may adapt over time at individual sites, allowing the browsing structure to evolve as the Web itself evolves. Third, the ability to visualize large portions of the Web in a more abstract way allows users to quickly get an impression of what type of information is available. Fourth, by keeping a history of changes to the local ontologies, the ebb and flow of the importance of concepts locally and globally can be presented. Finally, undergraduate and graduate students are being exposed to a truly interdisciplinary research through their involvement in a long term project that combines expertise from several fields, primarily computer graphics, artificial intelligence, distributed processing and information science. The World Wide Web (WWW) offers the promise of unlimited access to electronic information. However currently, the reality is electronic access to unlimited anarchy. This project is addressing the use of conceptual ontologies to bring order to the chaos.