Processing Dynamic Event Data and Multifaceted Knowledge in a Collaboration Federation

所有国家都面临着诸如边境管制和移民、毒品贩运、恐怖主义、人类疾病检测和控制、快速检测威胁农产品的病虫害等全球性问题。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异构数据，还要共享从不同知识表示方案和应用系统中获取的知识，以支持他们在高度分布和动态的环境中解决问题和决策。该项目将开发处理和管理以下方面的基础设施和技术：1)分布式事件；2)与事件发生相关的动态数据；3)由不同类型规则和规则结构表示的知识（多面知识）以及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。预期的结果包括：1)用于定义事件和获取多方面知识的扩展规则标记语言和用户界面工具；2)用于高效管理和处理分布式异构事件、事件数据、触发器和规则的技术；3)用于植物疾病诊断的领域本体和本体管理技术；4)扩展的Web服务基础设施，该基础设施具有本体增强和基于约束的注册表，用于对触发器、规则和应用程序操作进行语义发现，这些操作统一建模并作为Web服务发布；5)在NPDN的几个区域中心部署开发的工具和系统，用于应用和评估研发结果。智力优势：首先，扩展的规则标记语言将有助于RuleML社区为组织开发一种标准语言，以指定和共享用高级声明性规则表示的策略、法规、过程和约束。其次，由此产生的技术、算法、方法和基础设施将显著提高信息和知识管理的技术水平。第三，建议的本体增强和基于约束的Web服务注册中心将显著提高发现和调用已注册规则、规则结构和应用程序系统操作的质量。通过将异构规则和规则结构转换为Web服务，所需要的只是将它们作为Web服务调用的单个规则服务器，以实现协作解决问题。更广泛的影响：首先，研发结果将由NPDN环境中的合作组织联盟应用和评估。由此产生的协作系统和工具的部署将立即适用于国家预防虫害网络组织并对其产生影响，因为它们将及时获得任何疾病或虫害爆发的通知，并在应用知识规则产生的适当应急反应方面获得指导援助。其次，在Web Service注册中心中注册的事件、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、过程和约束，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.