The role of classification (s) in distributed knowledge management

2007

Being able to create views on the document space via grouping the documents is a key functionality in intelligent document management in view of browsing and querying. Hierarchically grouped sets of Documents can be viewed as simple extensionally defined ontological concepts. In an example Knowledge Management system (KnowCat) developed at UAM, Madrid, we investigate how agents for the maintenance of this ontology (these document groupings) can be constructed. We discuss two examples: A classification agent and a maintenance agent support users and administrators of the system to keep the ontology tight and functional. The agents are tested, developed targeted toward Spanish natural language documents, which requires adapted NLP techniques.

The Distributed Knowledge Management (DKM) approach tries to overcome problems deriving from a typical outcome of traditional Knowledge Management (KM) solutions: the creation of a unique conceptualization of corporate knowledge (e.g. an ontology or a unique system of classification) which does not allow autonomy of organizational units and the coexistence of different conceptual schemas (e.g. points of view or perspectives). This new approach takes strongly into account local heterogeneity, and looks at complex knowledge-based organizations as constellations of local organizational units which manage knowledge in an autonomous way, exchanging it with other units through meaning negotiation/coordination processes. In a DKM system each autonomous unit is reified by a Knowledge Node (KN), a useful abstraction which allows us to identify, within organizations, people who manage knowledge according to a local conceptual schema and a personalized system of artifacts. In this paper, a new methodology is described and then used to unveil Knowledge Nodes in a case study: Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.p.A., a complex Italian building industry. It is argued that the resulting Distributed Knowledge Management system might be implemented within the firm with a high probability of success, because the system of Knowledge Nodes (discovered through this methodology) reflects the perspective and the way in which organizational units usually manage their knowledge.

2005

Distributed Knowledge Management Systems (DKMS) are often faced to heterogeneous environments associated with the absence of shared vocabularies. DKMS realise Knowledge Flows (KF) between autonomous Knowledge Nodes (KN) as parts of social networks. Schwotzer models the KNs’ individual policies for input relevance and output strategy as Knowledge Ports (KP). The used Topic Maps Theory is best suited for the semantic integration of distributed, heterogeneous knowledge. Unfortunately, current implementations base on pure naming approaches in connection with the use of shared vocabularies. Maicher’s Subject Identity Measure Approach helps to use Topic Maps for the semantic integration of distributed, heterogeneous knowledge in the absence of these shared vocabularies. Our contribution is the liaison of the Knowledge Port Approach and the SIM Approach. This leads to DKMSs which significantly better deal with the absence of shared vocabularies.

2002

2011

The revolution of Internet and the Web takes the computer and information technology into a new age. The information on the web is growing very fast. The progress of information and communication technologies has made accessible a large amount of information, which have provided each of us with access to far more information than we can comprehend or manage. This emphasizes the difficulty with the resulting semantic heterogeneity of the diverse sources. Human knowledge is a living organism and as such evolves in time where different people having different viewpoints and using different terminology among people of different cultures and languages, intensify the heterogeneity of the sources even more. These introduce some concrete problems like natural language disambiguation, information retrieval and information integration. Nevertheless, the problem is quite well known in almost every branch of knowledge and has been independently approached by several communities for several deca...

Distributed Knowledge Management Systems (DKMS) are often faced to heterogeneous environments associated with the absence of shared vocabularies. DKMSs realise Knowledge Flows between autonomous Knowledge Nodes as parts of social networks. Schwotzer models the KNs' individual policies for input relevance and output strategy as Knowledge Ports. Topic Map Technologies are well suited for the semantic integration of distributed, heterogeneous knowledge. But current implementations base on pure naming approaches to Subject Identity in connection with the use of shared vocabularies. Maicher's SIM Approach helps to use Topic Map Technologies for the semantic integration of distributed, heterogeneous knowledge in the absence of shared vocabularies. To detect Subject similarity it exploits the Topics' usage in the current context. Our contribution is the liaison of the Knowledge Port Approach and the SIM Approach. This leads to DKMSs which significantly better deal with the absence of shared vocabularies.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

In this paper we present the use of ontology for knowledge representation and handling in Software Agent Systems. Motivation has come from Pellucid IST project where we need to capture and capitalize employee's knowledge in organization. This knowledge is then presented to other employees as they work on particular tasks. The Protg ontology editor and JADE multi-agent system is used for implementation. Ontology is usually used in intra-agent communication for agents to understand each other; we used ontology also as knowledge data model to store knowledge as instances of ontological terms into object database, thus agents can access and manipulate knowledge data directly and still stay lightweight.

IAENG Transactions on Electrical Engineering Volume 1, 2013

2002

In this paper we show that the typical architecture of current KM systems re. ects an objectivistic epistemology and a traditional managerial control paradigm. We argue that such an objectivistic epistemology is inconsistent with many theories on the nature of knowledge, in which subjectivity and sociality are taken as essential features of knowledge creation and sharing. We show that adopting such a new epistemological view has dramatic consequences at an architectural, managerial and technological level.

This paper presents a knowledge management experiment realized in an industrial company. Our research concerns the development of a knowledge engineering module integrated in a collaborative eGroupware system. This platform is used by engineers to realise their projects in a collaborative way and in following a defined professional process. The first step of our approach is based on the modelling of the professional process used by professional actor. We have developed a formalism called RIOCK (Role Interaction Organisation Competence and Knowledge) to identify the emanating Knowledge resulting from the interaction between the roles played by professional actors. According to the obtained cartography of Knowledge, we have defined a typology of Knowledge and built an ontology to create a representation language in order to share and broadcast Knowledge. In other hand, the RIOCK models allow us to design a knowledge engineering module based on a multi-agent system. This system monitors the action of the professional actors inside the eGroupware and capitalizes, annotates, and broadcasts Knowledge in using the semantic web technologies and the ontology.