Engineering Computer-based Contextual Models for Collaborative Teamwork

协作团队合作在医疗保健、制造业和灾难管理等多个领域变得越来越普遍。虽然协作团队工作可以受益于信息系统支持，但设计基于计算机的模型来支持协作是一项重大挑战，因为必须支持的任务和人员各不相同，协作发生的环境也不同。协作团队工作并不是完全相同的，而是会因为环境的不同而有很大的不同，我将其定义为“整合不同的、动态的和不同的协作团队工作需求，以实现特定的目标”。我们设计信息系统以支持协作团队工作的能力受到无法将上下文合并到需求工程和系统设计中的能力的限制。这项拟议研究的总体目标是开发用于协作团队工作的基于计算机的上下文模型的工程方法。实现总体目标有三个具体目标。第一个目标是使用本体工程开发协作上下文的概念模型。将进行系统的文献回顾，以确定本体论的协作团队实体和上下文。活动理论(AT)将被用来定义交战规则(即工作流)，并定义代表协作团队工作中不同实体之间的模糊点的矛盾。矛盾确定了哪些方面需要约束来缓解歧义。AT派生的约定规则和约束将定义本体中的属性和关系。第二个目标是使用O-MASE(基于组织的多智能体系统工程)将本体形式化成一个协同系统体系结构。之所以选择这种工程方法，是因为协作系统可以被认为是自治实体(代理)的集合，它们按照一定的交战规则进行交互，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)来实现以原型多代理为应用的协作系统架构，然后使用来自医疗保健和灾难管理的案例进行概念验证评估。拟议的研究将为开发信息系统提供一种创新的方法，以支持不同背景的协作团队工作。

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.