Processing Dynamic Event Data and Multifaceted Knowledge in a Collaboration Federation

所有国家都面临着全球性问题，如边境管制和移民、毒品贩运、恐怖主义、人类疾病检测和控制、威胁农产品的病虫害的快速检测等。这些复杂问题的解决方案要求一个国家内以及跨越国界的组织不仅要有效和高效地共享不同的数据，而且要共享从不同的知识表示方案和应用系统中获取的知识，以支持它们在高度分散和动态的环境中解决问题和决策。该项目将开发基础设施和技术，以处理和管理1)分布式事件，2)与事件发生有关的动态数据，以及3)由不同类型的规则和规则结构表示的知识(多方面知识)和由规则调用的应用系统操作。这项研究的背景是美国农业部的国家植物诊断网络(NPDN)，这是一个为快速检测作物病虫害爆发而建立的网络。NPDN的目标是使许多协作组织能够接收与一种事件类型的每次发生相关联的数据，以及由不同类型的规则和规则结构生成的数据，以及由该事件触发的应用程序操作。这将支持协作组织的本地决策、问题解决和活动协调。预期结果包括1)用于定义事件和捕获多方面知识的扩展规则标记语言和用户界面工具，2)用于高效和有效地管理和处理分布式、异类事件、事件数据、触发器和规则的技术，3)用于植物病害诊断的领域本体和用于本体管理的技术，4)具有本体增强型和基于约束的注册表的扩展Web服务基础设施，用于统一建模和发布为Web服务的触发、规则和应用操作的语义发现，5)将开发的工具和系统部署在新PDN的几个区域中心，用于R&A的应用和评估；D成果。智力上的优点：首先，扩展规则标记语言将有助于RuleML社区努力开发一种标准语言，供各组织具体说明和分享以高级说明性规则表示的政策、条例、程序和约束。其次，由此产生的技术、算法、方法论和基础设施将大大提高信息和知识管理的水平。第三，提出的本体增强和基于约束的Web服务注册中心将显著提高注册规则、规则结构和应用系统操作的发现和调用质量。通过将异类规则和规则结构转换为Web服务，所需要的只是一个规则服务器，该服务器将它们作为Web服务来调用，以实现协作解决问题。由此产生的协作系统和工具的部署将立即应用于新PDN组织并对其产生影响，因为它们将及时得到任何疾病或虫害爆发的通知，并因应用知识规则而获得关于适当应急反应的指导协助。其次，在Web服务注册处注册的事件、多方面的知识规范和应用程序操作将捕获协作组织的政策、法规、流程和限制，以供以后的教育和培训使用。

All nations are facing global problems such as border control and immigration, drug trafficking, terrorism, human disease detection and control, rapid detection of diseases and pests threatening agricultural commodities, and others. The solutions to these complex problems require organizations within a country as well as across national boundaries to effectively and efficiently share, not only heterogeneous data, but also knowledge captured in different knowledge representation schemes and application systems to support their problem-solving and decision-making in highly distributed and dynamic environments. This project will develop the infrastructure and technologies for the processing and management of 1) distributed events, 2) dynamic data associated with event occurrences, and 3) knowledge expressed by different types of rules and rule structures (multi-faceted knowledge) and application system operations invoked by rules. The context for this research is the USDA's National Plant Diagnostics Network (NPDN), a network established for rapid detection of crop disease and pest outbreaks. NPDN's goal is to enable many collaborating organizations to receive data associated with each occurrence of an event type as well as data generated by different types of rules and rule structures, and application operations triggered by the event. This will support the local decision-making, problem-solving and activity coordination of collaborating organizations.The expected results include 1) an extended rule markup language and user interface tools for defining events and capturing multi-faceted knowledge, 2) techniques for efficient and effective management and processing of distributed, heterogeneous events, event data, triggers and rules, 3) a domain ontology for plant disease diagnostics and techniques for ontology management, 4) an extended Web Service infrastructure with an ontology-enhanced and constraint-based registry for semantic discovery of triggers, rules and application operations that are uniformly modeled and published as Web Services, and 5) the deployment of the developed tools and system at several regional centers of the NPDN for application and evaluation of the R&D results.Intellectual merits: First, the extended Rule Markup Language will contribute to the effort of the RuleML community in developing a standard language for organizations to specify and share policies, regulations, processes and constraints expressed in terms of high-level declarative rules. Second, the resulting techniques, algorithms, methodologies and infrastructure will significantly advance the state of arts of information and knowledge management. Third, the proposed ontology-enhanced and constraint-based Web Service registry will significantly improve the quality of discovery and invocation of registered rules, rule structures, and application system operations. By converting heterogeneous rules and rule structures into Web Services, all that will be needed is a single rule server that invokes them as Web Services to achieve collaborative problem-solving.Broader Impacts: First, the R&D results will be applied and evaluated by a federation of collaborating organizations in the NPDN environment. The deployment of the resulting collaborative system and tools will have an immediate application to and impact on the NPDN organization because they will be timely informed of any disease or pest outbreak and receive guided assistance on appropriate emergency response resulting from the application of knowledge rules. Second, events, multifaceted knowledge specifications and application operations registered in the Web Service registry will capture collaborating organizations' policies, regulations, processes and constraints for later education and training uses.