Engineering Computer-based Contextual Models for Collaborative Teamwork

协作团队在医疗保健、制造和灾难管理等多个领域正变得越来越普遍。虽然协作团队可以从信息系统支持中受益，但是基于工程计算机的模型来支持协作是一个重大的挑战，因为必须支持的任务和人员的变化，以及协作发生的不同环境。协作团队并不是完全相同的，而是由于环境的不同而有很大的不同，我将其定义为“协作团队为实现特定目标所需要的多样化、动态和异质需求的整合”。我们设计信息系统以支持协作团队的能力，由于我们无法将上下文合并到需求工程和系统设计中而受到限制。本研究的总体目标是开发基于工程计算机的协作团队情境模型的方法。三个具体目标与实现总体目标有关。第一个目标是使用本体论工程开发协作上下文的概念模型。系统的文献综述将用于确定协作团队本体的实体和上下文。活动理论（AT）将用于定义交战规则（即工作流程），并定义协作团队中不同实体之间表示歧义点的矛盾。矛盾确定了在哪里需要约束来减轻歧义。AT派生的交战和约束规则将定义本体中的属性和关系。第二个目标是使用O-MaSE（基于组织的多代理系统工程）将本体形式化为协作系统体系结构。之所以选择这种工程方法，是因为协作系统可以被视为根据某些交战规则进行交互的自主实体（agent）的集合，以实现共同的目标。第三个目标是使用工作流和代理开发环境（WADE）和Java代理开发框架（JADE）将协作系统架构实现为原型多代理is应用程序，然后使用来自医疗保健和灾难管理的案例研究进行概念验证评估。建议的研究将提供一种创新的方法来开发信息系统，以支持不同的协同团队工作环境。

Collaborative teamwork is becoming more common in several domains including healthcare, manufacturing and disaster management. While collaborative teamwork can benefit from information system support, engineering computer-based models to support collaboration is a significant challenge owing to the variations in tasks and people that must be supported, and the different contexts within which collaboration takes place. Collaborative teamwork is not all the same but rather can vary greatly because of context, which I define as ‘the integration of diverse, dynamic, and heterogeneous needs for collaborative teamwork to achieve a specific goal’. Our ability to design information systems to support collaborative teamwork is limited by our inability to incorporate context into requirements engineering and systems design. The overall goal of this proposed research is to develop methodologies for engineering computer based contextual models for collaborative teamwork. Three specific objectives are associated with achieving the overall goal. The first objective is to develop a conceptual model of collaborative contexts using ontological engineering. A systematic literature review will be done to identify collaborative teamwork entities and contexts for the ontology. Activity Theory (AT) will be used to define rules of engagement (i.e. workflows) and to define contradictions that represent points of ambiguity between different entities in collaborative teamwork. Contradictions identify where constraints are needed to mitigate the ambiguity. The AT derived rules of engagement and constraints will define the properties and relationships in the ontology. The second objective is to formalize the ontology into a collaborative system architecture using O-MaSE (Organization-based Multi-agent System Engineering). This engineering method was selected because a collaborative system can be perceived as collection of autonomous entities (agents) interacting according to some rules of engagement in order to achieve a common goal. The third objective is to use Workflows and Agents Development Environment (WADE) and Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) to implement the collaborative system architecture as prototype multi-agent IS application and then to do proof of concept evaluation using case studies from healthcare and disaster management. The proposed research will provide an innovative method for developing information systems to support different contexts of collaborative teamwork.