1. 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 )

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

3. 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

4. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

5. 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?” <
Copy right 2004 Adam Pease permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

6. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

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

8. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

9. Upper Ontology
An attempt to capture the most general and reusable terms and definitions
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10. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

11. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

12. WordNet Lexical database 100,000 word senses – synsets Free
De facto standard in the linguistics world
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13. 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
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14. SUMO Structure Structural Ontology Base Ontology Set/Class Theory
Numeric
Temporal
Mereotopology
Graph
Measure
Processes
Objects
Qualities
Copy right 2004 Adam Pease permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

15. SUMO+Domain Ontology SUMO Mid-Level 20399 67108 2500
Structural
Ontology
SUMO
Base
Ontology
Total Terms Total Axioms Total Rules
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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

16. 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 permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

17. Reference (Adam Pease)
Articulate Software
- SUMO on line
- Sigma environment
- publications, references
Copy right 2004 Adam Pease permission to copy granted so long as slides and this notice are not altered

18. [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

19. 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)

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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

23. Our Hosting Facility

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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”

28. 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

29. 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

30. Appendix

31. References (Peter Yim)
Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap Vision and Mission
[ontolog-forum]:
CWE Community:
CIM3 ASP Product/Pricing: Collaborative Work Environment Hosting
More Information:
CIM Engineering, Inc.
Peter P. Yim (bio) (cv)

33.
The CWE where NIST is engaging an international community of multi-disciplinary experts in a discourse on “semantic distance”

34. The “pilot” and the “sandbox” for eGov CWE’s

35. For the community of Government CWE users and administrators
For the community of Government CWE users and administrators

36. The Collaborative Work Environment Features
archived 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

37. CWE use cases – Archived Discussions
ref:

38. CWE use cases – wiki augmented meetings & calls
ref:

39. CWE use cases – shared document repository
ref:

40. CWE use cases – collective intelligence
ref: