held at MITRE (McLean, VA) Building Shared Understanding: Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO), [ontolog-forum] & CIM3 Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) by Adam Pease & Peter Yim presented to the SICoP Meeting - May 19, 2004 held at MITRE (McLean, VA) ( v 1.20 )

Ontology Overview Ontolog Motivation Ontologies compared to other stuff Upper ontology specifics Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Two of the [ontolog] efforts: UBL Ontology An effort to create a formal business ontology from the work of the OASIS Universal Business Language Technical Committee (UBL TC) Has adopted the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) and the MId-Level Ontology (MILO) as its basis for coding extensions in SUO-KIF CCT Ontology An effort to create a formal ontology for the UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Component Types Taking the same approach adopted for the UBL Ontology project Will be submitting this, along with a report and recommendations to the UN/CEFACT CCTS (Core Component Technical Specifications) & TBG-17 (Harmonization) Working Groups

Motivation select EMPDAT from PERSTAB where POS=“mgmnt” What does it mean? PERSTAB is a table which lists employee data What’s an employee? How is an employee different from a contractor? What if I want data on both? Even if this information is available in natural language, a human has to read it Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Motivation (2) "Parenthood is a more general relationship than motherhood." "Mary is the mother of Bill." "Who are Bill's parents?“ "Mary is the parent of Bill.” that fact is not stated anywhere, but can be derived by a DAML application. Example from “Why Use DAML?” <http://www.daml.org/2002/04/why.html> Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Language Formality and Expressiveness Human Language CycL F-Logic KIF Machine Processing OWL Human Consumption Machine Inference SQL Expressiveness DAML XML Formality Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Content Formality and Size Cyc WordNet SUMO+domain SUMO UMLS Yahoo! DOLCE Taxonomy Lexicons Formal Ontology Size Formality Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Many Ways to Use Ontology As an information engineering tool Create a database schema Map the schema to an upper ontology Use the ontology as a set of reminders for additional information that should be included As more formal comments Define an ontology that is used to create a DB or OO system Use a theorem prover at design time to check for inconsistencies For taxonomic reasoning Do limited run-time inference in Prolog, a description logic, or even Java For first order logical inference Full-blown use of all the axioms at run time Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Upper Ontology An attempt to capture the most general and reusable terms and definitions Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Motivation Ontologies may have different names for the same things type – a relation between a class and an instance instance – a relation between a class and an instance isa – a relation between a class and an instance … Ontologies may have the same name for different things, and no corresponding terms before – a relation between two time points before – a relation between two time intervals Either use the same upper ontology, or at least map to a common upper ontology Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Suggested Upper Merged Ontology 1000 terms, 4000 axioms, 750 rules Mapped by hand to all of WordNet 1.6 A “starter document” in the IEEE SUO group Associated domain ontologies totalling 20,000 terms and 60,000 axioms Free SUMO is owned by IEEE but basically public domain Domain ontologies are released under GNU Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

WordNet Lexical database 100,000 word senses – synsets Free De facto standard in the linguistics world Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

SUMO In use by academics and industry Versions available in KIF, XML, DAML, LOOM, Protege Language generation templates in English, Czech, Italian, German, Hindi, Chinese Open source browser Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

SUMO Structure Structural Ontology Base Ontology Set/Class Theory Numeric Temporal Mereotopology Graph Measure Processes Objects Qualities Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

SUMO+Domain Ontology SUMO Mid-Level 20399 67108 2500 Structural Ontology SUMO Base Ontology Total Terms Total Axioms Total Rules 20399 67108 2500 Set/Class Theory Numeric Temporal Mereotopology Graph Measure Processes Objects Qualities Mid-Level WMD Transnational Issues Financial Ontology Geography ECommerce Services Communications Distributed Computing Government People Transportation Military Terrorist Terrorist Attack Types Economy Elements NAICS … France Afghanistan UnitedStates Terrorist Attacks Biological Viruses World Airports Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Conclusion Reuse is important – don't reinvent the wheel Open source lowers costs (especially for early-stage technology) Focus on content reuse, not just language reuse Expressiveness is your friend Let’s all work towards building shared understanding Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

Reference (Adam Pease) Articulate Software adampease@earthlink.net http://www.ontologyportal.org - SUMO on line https://sourceforge.net/projects/sigmakee/ - Sigma environment http://home.earthlink.net/~adampease/ - publications, references Copy right 2004 Adam Pease adampease@earthlink.net– permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

[ontolog] & CWE Outline What do Ontologies, Standards & Collaboration have in Common? [ontolog-forum] – an implementation of CWE The CIM3 Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) What’s next? - proposal to collaborate

Ontologies, Standards & Collaboration Common goals Interoperability (working together) Better efficiency (time & cost) Adopting best practices Eliminating duplicated efforts Optimal Effectiveness (getting things done) Common approach Eliminate/Reduce Ambiguity Develop Shared Understanding “ … on tackling 'wicked problems': it's about having a shared commitment, developing a shared understanding, augmented by a shared display and a facilitator.” -- citing the work by the IBIS people (Horst Rittle/Jeff Conklin)

The ONTOLOG Charter Ontolog is an open forum to: Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the development of both formal and informal ontologies used in business Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be applied to the UBL effort In summary: Established - April 2002; reconstituted – Sep. 2002 Co-covened by: Peter Yim, Leo Obrst & Kurt Conrad Deals with issues in the “business” domain ontology, Trying to influence the future of eBusiness standards

What is CIM3 ? CIM3: (originated from CIM : Computer Integrated Manufacturing) previously, “Computer Integrated-Man-Machine Manufacturing” now, “Collaboration In huMan-Machine-Methodology” effectively, it is about optimizing systems of: People, Tools and Process Mission: to enable more effective distributed collaboration and virtual enterprise through bootstrapping collective intelligence over the Internet Doing business as: “cim3.com”, “cim3.net” and “cim3.org” cim3.com – the business arm of the company cim3.net – the collaborative work environments where client Communities of Practice and distributed team workspaces are hosted cim3.org – the research arm, and holder of the company’s open technology, content and other intellectual properties Products/Services: providing an ASP based Collaborative Work Environment (“CWE”) infrastructure that enables distributed project teams, virtual enterprise partners and communities of practice to work effectively over the Internet.

Our Focus: Communities & Distributed Teams People as an integral part of the system The Community Spectrum [Kaplan/iCohere] Affinity Networks Learning Communities Communities of Practice (CoP’s) Project Teams We optimize our infrastructure, tools and process for CoP’s and Distributed Project Teams Bottom Line: “Two of the most critical success factors in collaboration would be on developing Trust and our Attitude Towards Sharing” -ppy

Our Hosting Facility

Some Current CIM3 Projects & Pilots eGov - <sine>, <colab>, <gov-cwe> Open standards development: [ontolog] Forum - an international forum on business ontologies NIST – semantic distance workshop on <interop> OASIS-UBL TC work/collaboration support International Collaborative R&D: Millennium Project - State of the Future Index System Development AC/UNU-Millennium Project - hosting and collaboration support Digital Art Ontology - <dao> Learning/Education: Aragon Robotics Team - <art> Western Region Robotics Forum - an adjunct to the FIRST Robotics Competition initiative

Applications at the <ontolog> Community CWE The Discussion Forum The Wiki – a read+write website The File Workspace/Repository Best Practices Archived discussions Project HomePages Sharing documents and Resources Augmented Conference Calls Virtual Presentations & Workshops Knowledge sharing, re-use, access & exploration An open collaborative work environment

CIM3's Approach Augmentation - human-machine interaction - collaboration - communities Openness - we use open-source software & comply with open standards as much as we can; we open-source our technology and content, and participate in open standards development Capitalizing on the Internet technology: taking it from the research and academic network to the current form as publishing media to Transactions and Web Services onto being its future as knowledge media in the Semantic Web Providing Enterprise performance, quality, robustness, security & fault tolerance Providing platform neutrality: supporting machines on PC’s, Mac’s, Linux, Unix, … System built upon a knowledge architecture optimized for distributed teamwork Emphasis on effectiveness and strategic value - not technology Supporting entire user spectrum: from the everyday users to the power users While we do open-source work, we believe in properly remunerating our contributors, and in helping create a viable economic model for open work

The Case for the Augmentation Approach in CWE We work towards providing a work environment for both humans and machines, optimizing between objectives like Supporting the expressiveness that humans need to convey their ideas, and the structure and rigor that machines need to properly interoperate - in essence, promoting both creativity and operational efficacy The ease-of-use that everyday users need, and the versatility and extensibility that power users need to take their work to the next level Securing the borders of the cwe to malicious intruders, while encouraging access, participation, sharing and the free flow of information and knowledge among members of the trusted communities Catering to the quality requirements of information and transaction processing systems and the realities of human behavior that just aren’t * Fully describable, fully online, fully informative, fully accurate, or fully responsible Our intent is to foster shared understanding and learning We are trying to spur innovation, as well as organic or emergent behavior in the user communities and teams * Ref: Winograd, Newman, Yim “Including People in CIM Designs”

An Organizational Form that the CWE aims at Supporting The Fishnet Organization Source: Institute for the Future: Johansen, R., Swigart, R.  Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Organization

Proposal to Collaborate Encourage cross-participation in our CoP’s Next [ontolog] face-to-face Meeting will be in the Washington DC area – July 2004 Let’s have a joint SICoP-Ontolog workshop then Identifying fundable ontological engineering projects which we can tackle by forming virtual teams among members of our CoPs (as in fishnet organizations & virtual enterprises) Augment those projects (or other current ones that may benefit) by putting them on the CWE infrastructure

Appendix

References (Peter Yim) Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap Vision and Mission [ontolog-forum]: http://ontolog.cim3.net/ CWE Community: http://community.cim3.net CIM3 ASP Product/Pricing: Collaborative Work Environment Hosting More Information: CIM Engineering, Inc. <peter.yim@cim3.com> Peter P. Yim (bio) (cv)

http://sine.cim3.net

http://interop.cim3.net/ The CWE where NIST is engaging an international community of multi-disciplinary experts in a discourse on “semantic distance”

The “pilot” and the “sandbox” for eGov CWE’s http://colab.cim3.net/

For the community of Government CWE users and administrators http://gov-cwe.cim3.net For the community of Government CWE users and administrators

The Collaborative Work Environment Features archived email forum Wiki : a read-and-write web document repository/ file sharing workspace Community of Practice (CoP) portal Fine-grain access and linking (“purple numbers”) Full-text search voice conferencing screen/application sharing instant messaging real-time chat session Optimized for distributed community and teamwork Platform neutral

CWE use cases – Archived Discussions ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/

CWE use cases – wiki augmented meetings & calls ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MeetingsCalls

CWE use cases – shared document repository ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Conference_Call_2004-01-08

CWE use cases – collective intelligence ref: http://art.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ResourcesLinks