Engineering Computer-based Contextual Models for Collaborative Teamwork

协作团队在医疗保健、制造业和灾害管理等多个领域变得越来越普遍。虽然协同工作可以受益于信息系统的支持，工程计算机为基础的模型，以支持合作是一个重大的挑战，由于不同的任务和人员，必须支持，以及不同的背景下，合作发生。 协作团队并不都是一样的，而是可以因为上下文而有很大的不同，我将其定义为“为实现特定目标而进行协作团队的多样化，动态和异构需求的整合”。 ** 我们设计信息系统以支持协作团队的能力受到我们无法将上下文纳入需求工程和系统设计的限制。这项研究的总体目标是开发基于计算机的上下文模型的协同工作的工程方法。 三个具体目标与实现总体目标有关。第一个目标是开发一个概念模型的协作上下文使用本体工程。 一个系统的文献综述将被用来识别协作团队实体和本体的上下文。 活动理论（AT）将用于定义参与规则（即工作流程），并定义代表协作团队中不同实体之间模糊点的矛盾。矛盾确定在哪里需要约束来减轻模糊性。AT导出的参与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（基于解析的多代理系统工程）将本体形式化为协作系统架构。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参与规则进行交互以实现共同目标的自治实体（代理）的集合。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）实现的协作系统架构的原型多代理的IS应用程序，然后做的概念验证评估使用的案例研究，从医疗保健和灾害管理。拟议的研究将提供一个创新的方法，开发信息系统，以支持不同的背景下的协作团队。

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.