Decision Mtg 11 Agenda

Decision Meeting #11 Goal & Agenda

Background

The dial-in information for this week's meeting is here. The Decision Incubator Activity is intended to explore the use cases and design of a Decision Representation format (e.g. in XML, RDF, OWL…) available on the wiki along with its use by participants in testbed settings for experiments and exercises. Each meeting will be an opportunity to summarize progress & contributions to the wiki, review next steps and action items, and to review the current representation format.

Summary from the Last Meeting

At the last meeting (see minutes), we discussed four major topics: (1) decisions as a set of patterns; (2) a simple xml format for decisions as open linked data; (3) a way-ahead via an Interoperability Testbed and Open Linked Data; and (4) Implications for routing. Jeff revisited our progress and mentioned our deliverables including requirements, use cases and a potential standard format for decisions. The scope is information exchange and situational awareness in a networked environment. The potential standard format should provide concise, generic, structured assessments and decisions. We have defined the initial use cases and required decision components and begun modeling. One thing that can help with this modeling effort is the mapping of our decisions components to the patterns implied by these components, since we are reusing or generating patterns in our eXtreme design modeling process. Also following the example set by the Open Linked Data approach, where any simple format published by a government agency is converted into RDF, there is a suggestion that we could follow this same format to ease transition which would include a simple XML format for decisions which could then be mapped over into RDF. This could then be explored in an interoperability testbed treating decisions essentially as another example of open linked data. The final agenda item, routing, was in recognition of the fact that there are interesting implications for pushing data in addition to pulling data. In the emergency management area, we have an opportunity to explore pushing decision information via a smart router. The concept is that all of these items (design, simple format, interop testbed with decision tool, push and pull) come together as mechanisms to help us finish our effort.

Eva mentioned an opportunity for us to present our current progress in the form of a position paper at a workshop on ontology patterns at the international semantic web conference. The deadline is Aug 20. Everyone agreed this would be worthwhile.

Jeff described the good talk he had with Jim Hendler about the excellent work Jim and team are doing with the open linked data and Jeff's suggestion that the decision incubator work could leverage these efforts to show how open linked data could be used to support decision-making. Jeff will follow-up with Jim on this topic.

Regarding decomposing decisions into patterns, Jeff referenced a link where he began this effort. http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/decision/wiki/Final_Report_Decision_Components_And_Patterns. Eva mentioned that it's important to not lose the connection to the use cases, because if it's too general, we may construct too big or complex a pattern. All agreed. Jeff suggested we just need to keep them in sync. Jeff suggested the "question" implies a "Statement with Variable" pattern. The "Options" suggest a "Filter" and "Aggregation" patterns. The "Metrics" imply a "Normalizer", "Weighting" and "Aggregation" pattern. The "Assessment" is an "Ordering" pattern and the "Choice" is a "Selection" pattern.

Regarding an interoperability testbed, Jeff described an ongoing effort in support of emergency management to link certain participating servers to explore and develop interoperability solutions. Jeff mentioned that Don and Jeff are linking servers in this fashion and asked if Eva would be interested in participating. Jeff agreed to forward some information on policy-oriented routing and an outline of a position paper.

Goal for this Meeting

At this eleventh meeting of the Decision Incubator, we are taking specific steps towards finishing our incubator efforts, including discussing our work on common components, reviewing our list of patterns which cover the range of our modelling efforts, discussing how to instrument a tool for leveraging open linked data and our decision format, and also discussing the next steps to generating a position paper describing the current status of our efforts.

Agenda

The following agenda items will be discussed at the next meeting. The topic, time, summary and discussion leader are provided for each agenda item.

(0) Review of Status, Goals & Agenda Overview (5 min, Jeff)

Use of our core component models and patterns list will be mentioned and suggested goals for next few weeks.

(1) A "Core Decision" Model for Decisions (15 min, Eva/Jeff)

Eva will describe her recent work to define a "core decision" model for that use case, where the simple and essential basics of a decision need to be represented. Eva has captured her work at http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/decision/wiki/Use_Case_OLD_Core_Decision_Model#Draft_Solution Any decision representation will need these "core" components at a minimum. The essence of a decision might be captured by these components and could be the easiest first step for any system to begin capturing and storing decisions.

(2) Implied Patterns of Decision Components (15 min, Eva/Jeff)

At the last meeting, Jeff suggested that breaking the essential decision components into their implied patterns might advance the modeling effort, if kept in sync with the driving use cases. Jeff recommended that we revisit this at today's meeting after members have had a chance to review and edit as needed.

(3) Status of Instrumenting a Decision Tool for Leveraging Open Linked Data in an Interoperability Testbed (15 min, Jeff)

Jeff will revisit two topics from last time and summarize progress and status. The two topics are the concept of instrumenting a decision tool for both leveraging open linked data and representing our proposed decision format in a simple XML format suitable for easy transition and conversion into linked data, as well as the process of proceeding with some early testing with some supporting RDF infrastructure in an interoperability testbed utilizing the emergency management domain. This will include the concept of granularized routing of emergency management information. This will help provide an example of going from A-to-Z with raw data, conversion, query and exploration. The conversion into the more expressive designed pattern-based ontologies can be a natural extension of this near-term effort. The use of

(4) Current Progress with Documenting Work in a Paper (15 minutes, Eva/Marion)

Eva and Marion will describe their excellent work to lead the development of a paper describing the incubator effort in terms of the use of ontology patterns. Remaining steps to finish this work will be discussed.