1. Ontology and Agent based Approach for Knowledge Management
Defense of PhD Thesis
Michal Laclavík
Supervisor: Ing. Ladislav Hluchý PhD.
Dear Charman, Commission members, reviewers, guests

2. Outline Motivation State of the Art Objectives Methodology and Tools
Agent Knowledge Model – Models, Methodology, Library
Experience Management
Applications
Conclusion
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

3. Motivation and State of the Art
MAS is powerful paradigm for distributed or heterogeneous systems
MAS need Knowledge Support and Semantics
MAS need Connection with Existing Commercial Standards
Agent Technology Roadmap: Current MAS Systems – lack of Internal Agent Knowledge Model, lack of interconnection with semantic web results (knowledge model representations) and commercial standards
Focus on Agents and Knowledge representation (Ontologies)
Knowledge Management and Experience Management as application domains
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

4. State of the Art - Agents
Agent Definition: An agent is a computer system capable of flexible autonomous action in a dynamic, unpredictable and open environment. (LUCK 2003)
MAS Standards: FIPA, MASIF
Related to agent communication, agent platforms
No standards for internal agent knowledge model with available implementations
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

5. State of the Art - Agents
Architectures:
Reactive Architecture
No specification of knowledge model, behavior of agent is based on implemented responses to environment states
Belief Desire Intention Architecture – BDI
Belief – represents knowledge model, available some implementations based on logic programming, not used in FIPA compliant MAS
Behavioral Architecture
FIPA compliant MAS are based on such architecture
No specification of Internal Agent Knowledge model – depend on agent designer and developer
JADE Agent System
Support for ontologies based on FIPA-SL (Similar to First Order Logic)
No Query engine
No Storage
No Inference
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

6. State of the Art – Ontologies, Knowledge
Characters
Data
Information
Knowledge
Actions
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
Reasoning
(Bergman, 2002,
Experience Management)
Ontologies
Knowledge Representation
OWL-DL compatible with Description Logic
Query and Storage Engines available
RDF, OWL, RDQL based
Application domain
Knowledge Management (KM) is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets (Source: CIO Magazine)
Experience Management is special kind of KM – based on “lessons learned”
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

7. Problem Specification
Graphical User Interface
User requests
Displaying results
Multi Agent System
External
System
Agent 1
Agent 2
Agent 3
XML, XML-RPC, SOAP
IIOP,
HTTP,
SMTP
ACL KM
FIPA ACL,
KIF, FIPA-SL, FIPA-RDF
Knowledge
Model
FIPA ACL,
RDF/OWL, RDQL
Knowledge
Base
Knowledge Storage
Querying
Directory
Facilitator
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

8. State of The Art Conclusion
Focus on software, intelligent and FIPA compliant agents
Providing better semantic infrastructure (ontologies, knowledge models)
Apply basic principles of software and knowledge engineering
Make stronger connection between MAS and existing commercial technologies
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

9. Thesis Objectives
Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model
Design of Software Development Methodology for creation of Agents with Ontology based Knowledge Model
Design of Generic Ontology Model for Experience Management with extension to different application domains.
Design & Development of Software Library for building Intelligent Agents with Ontology Knowledge Model with possibility to plug agents to existing commercial technologies
Design and Development of user friendly Knowledge Presentation.
Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation.
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

10. Used Methods and Methodologies
Knowledge management, system design
Unified Modeling Language – UML
CommonKADS, MAScommonKADS
Protégé as Tool for CommonKADS
Formal methods for describing ontology based models
Description Logic
Graph Ontology representation
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

11. Used Tools and Software
Protégé Ontology Editor
Support for OWL ontology format
Can be used as modeling tool
JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework)
Most developing MAS framework
Compliant with FIPA standards
Jena – Semantic Web Framework for Java
Support for OWL – best available OWL API
Support for RDQL model querying
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

12. Agent Knowledge Model Objective:
Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model

13. Agent Knowledge Model
Based on Events, Resources, Actions, Actors, Context
Formally Described using Sets, Description Logic (compatible with OWL-DL), Graph Representation
Actor Context updating function/algorithm (Actor Environment State)
CAnew = fC(ea,CAold)
Resources updating function/algorithm (result of fulfilled actor goals)
RAnew = fR(CAnew,RAold)
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

14. Software Development Methodology
Objective:
Design of Software Development Methodology for creation of Agents with Ontology based Knowledge Model

15. Development Methodology (Knowledge Model)
Extending Model with Protégé Editor following CommonKADS models
Organizational or Environment Model
Task Model
Agent or Actor Model
Includes implementation of algorithms for context and resource updating
Results
Ontology developed in Protégé which can be exported in OWL format.
Concrete Algorithms for each actor (often algorithms are similar or same) which updates actors' context CAnew and resources RAnew.
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

16. Development Methodology (System Design)
UML Diagrams for concrete Application Domain
Use Case Diagram
for each agent
agent is taken as system boundaries
Sequence Diagram
Communication among agents
Class Diagram
Behaviors are described as methods
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

17. Agent Software Library
Objectives:
Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model
Design & Development of Software Library for building Intelligent Agents with Ontology Knowledge Model with possibility to plug agents to existing commercial technologies

18. Agent Software Library
Support for OWL based Agent Knowledge Model
Support for XML-RPC connection to receive event and send plain XML
Support for agent communication using FIPA ACL with OWL and RDQL as content languages
Support for Presentation of Ontological Knowledge (RDF/OWL => plain XML + XSL => HTML)
JADE and Jena Integration
Available on JADE official website to MAS community
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

19. Agent Library Example
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

20. Support for Knowledge and Experience Management
Objective:
Design of Generic Ontology Model for Experience Management with extension to different application domains.

21. Extension of Model for Experience Management
Extended Agent Memory Model
Workflow Related
WfInstance, WfActivity
ActiveHint
Sub class of resource
Representation of Experience
Employee
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

22. Algorithms for EM Extension
Actor (Employee) Context updating algorithm
CAnew = fC(ea,CAold)
Resources (Active Hint) updating algorithm
RAnew = fR(CAnew,RAold)
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

23. Complexity of algorithms
All depends also on Active Hints Templates count – this does not grow too fast.
1st Case: Constant – final count of context elements (1-6)
2nd Case: O(n) – based on resource/event count in Memory
3rd Case: O(n2) – based on 2 loops: events/resources, similar resources
experimental solution because algorithm used other software e.g. Jena with RDQL – it was hard to prove complexity different way.
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

24. Resource Similarity (3rd Case)
Similarity of Ontology Individuals
Weighted matching of properties
Similar to CBR algorithm Weighted Euclidian Distance
sim({res1,res2}) = fsim( "{propi} º propertyi.Resource({res1}) Ç "{propj} º propertyj.Resource({res2}) Ç {propi} º {propj} Ç {propi} Î DomainClass Ç DomainClass Í Domain Ç ${simWeight} Î SimilarityWeight Ç domainClass.SimilarityWeight( DomainClass) Î {simWeight} Ç {weight} º weight .SimilarityWeight( DomainClass) Î {simWeight}; Sij{weight}/n )
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

25. Presentation of Ontology based Knowledge
Objective:
Design and Development of user friendly Knowledge Presentation.

26. Presentation of Ontology based Knowledge
Ontology Tree
Browse window
Graph
XSL Transformation
RDF/OWL => Plain XML + XSL => HTML
Infrastructure to receive plain XML using XML-RPC
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

27. Objective: Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation.
Applications
Objective:
Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation.

28. Pellucid 5FP IST Project
Pellucid Architecture
Title: Platform for Organizationally Mobile Public Employees
Duration: Sep Dec 2004
Knowledge Management to support employees
Workflow based Administration Processes
To support Employee Mobility in organization
Agent Architecture based on autonomous co-operating agents
Pellucid Agents
Process Layer
Interaction Layer
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

29. Pellucid Applications
CDG, Genoa, Italy Traffic Light Management
MMBG, Sanlucar, Spain Project Management
SADESI, Seville, Spain Telephone Incidence Resolution
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

30. K-Wf Grid 6FP IST Project
Title: Knowledge-based Workflow System for Grid Applications
Objectives: To support workflow construction and execution with Knowledge
Duration: Sep Feb 2007
Work on new EMBET architecture
Current state: User Assistant Agent in K-Wf Grid uses model presented in thesis.
Algorithms presented in chapter 5 were reused with same improvements and modifications.
Architecture is not Agent based but users of system are modeled as actors.
Knowledge Model, its implementation and modified algorithms presented in thesis are used
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

31. Conclusion and Future Work

32. Conclusion (1) The most significant scientific achievements
Agent knowledge model
Applicable in any discrete environment where actors need to be modeled
Can be expressed by ontology, sets or description logic
Such model was found useful for:
Simple goal oriented agents
Knowledge Management Solution based on Agents (Pellucid)
Experience Management Solution non agent based (EMBET System)
Development Methodology
Speed up Knowledge based Agent development for concrete application domains
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

33. Conclusion (2) The most significant development achievements
Agent Library
Support for OWL based Agent Knowledge Model
Support for XML-RPC connection to receive event and send plain XML
Support for Presentation of Ontological Knowledge (RDF/OWL => plain XML + XSL => HTML)
Support for agent communication using FIPA ACL with OWL and RDQL as content languages
JADE and Jena Integration
Available on JADE official website to MAS community (August - December 2005 – 314 downloads)
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

34. Conclusion (3) Extension of Work for Experience Management Projects
Model
Algorithms
Projects
Motivation for solving problems in real Application
Evaluation of Thesis results
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

35. Future work
RAPORT APVT project (01/ /2007): Research and development of a knowledge based system to support workflow management in organizations with administrative processes
model and algorithms will be reused and extended
K-Wf Grid EU 6FP RTD IST project ( )
evaluation on more applications, improvement of context detection
NAZOU SPVV Project (09/ /2007): Tools for acquisition, organization and maintenance of knowledge in an environment of heterogeneous information resources
OnTeA semantic annotation – not directly related but can be used for context detection
Bratislava, 12th January 2006

36. Thank you ! Thank You for you attention Many Thanks to my supervisor
Many Thanks to my colleagues
Many Thanks to the Reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments and for reading my thesis