Decision Mtg 4 Agenda

Decision Meeting #4 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.

Regarding status, we have outlined some initial use cases and we are beginning to apply our eXtreme Design (XD) approach to our decision components that we've initially identified. In order to do this, it is important to consider and become familiar with relevant ontology design patterns. As we proceed, we also recognize the need to educate ourselves on the appropriate use of the tools (e.g. Neon), the use of the semantic standards (e.g. RDF, OWL and SPARQL), and the practical use of the data enabled through those standards (e.g. Open Linked Data) as subject matter and context for our decisions. A fruitful agenda for any of our meetings would include a mixture of both specific application of XD to selected decision components, as well as more general but focused educational items on the tools/patterns/standards/linkedData efforts. The latter can be fostered through our own efforts as well as invited participants willing to share their expertise.

Action Items from the Last Meeting

At the last meeting, Udi Bauman was an invited participant and he graciously shared his experience with his decision support tool, Ekkli. Further collaboration was recommended, including the possibility of having the Ekkli tool support this Incubator's emerging Decision representation. Action items included initial review of the Ekkli tool, continued design of the Information Flow and Core Decision components utilizing the ontology design patterns, including the Transition pattern.

Goal for this Meeting

At this fourth meeting of the Decision Incubator, the goal is to further the eXtreme Design effort for the decision format, but also more broadly discuss and explore the implications of the intertwining threads of ontology design patterns, open linked data, SPARQL, use cases, and emergency management as an example application domain.

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.

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

The interesting aspect of our status is the multiple levels across which we are exploring the implications of the combined W3C and incubator member efforts to decision-making. At the same time we are beginning to design specific components to evolve a near-term trial representation, we are considering the broader concept of how decision-making can be a foundational layer illuminating the significance of enabling linked data. In other words, why link the data? To support decision-making.

(2) Progress on Application of Transition Design Pattern for Information Flow Use Case (10 minutes, Jeff)

The Information Flow Use Case is all about time spent in decision states and transitions through those states. The Transition ontology design pattern seems to be a good fit for this design problem. Jeff will discuss his latest activity exploring the application of this pattern.

(3) Overview of Selected Ontology Design Patterns Relevant for Decision-Making (15 minutes, Eva)

Ontology Design Patterns are the foundation upon which the eXtreme Design approach is based. Familiarity with these patterns is important to appreciate and recognize these patterns in the field. Eva will review several of these patterns to familiarize the members with some of the key patterns which may be applicable for components of decision-making. For more info on Ontology Design Patterns, see http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/decision/wiki/Decision_Incubator_Tools/ODP_Tour.

We will talk briefly about the following:

• Basic patterns
  • Situation
  • Time interval
  • Collection
  • Componency and part of
  • Sequence
• Complex patterns
  • Transition
  • Control flow

(4) Overview of EDXL Emergency Management Standards and Impact on Decision-Making (10 minutes, Don/Jeff)

One of the important application domains for improved representation of decision-making is emergency management. The key Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) standards envision support and interaction with semantic standards. To begin the discussion and application of the incubator work to this important domain, Jeff and Don will provide a quick overview of the current and emerging EDXL standards and discuss the potential use of semantic standards for the representation of multi-jurisdiction policies for high-level routing and for tracking and managing decision-making. The discussion will include the need for education on the significance and ease of applying semantic standards.

(5) Application of SPARQL for Decision Metric Assessment (10 minutes, Jeff)

Participants are developing an Open Linked Data Use Case. An underlying proposition is that an excellent use of linked open data is to support decision-making. The discussion will consider how best to integrate and utilize linked data for serving as the subject, the context, and the environment for decision-making. For example, SPARQL, a standard format for querying RDF data stores, is highly flexible with the ability to merge various RDF stores, query for specific fields across the stores, with filtering and ordering based on regular expressions, boolean logic, and simple mathematics. This flexibility allows SPARQL to be viewed as one method for taking a static decision representation (including metrics/criteria and options) and transforming it into a dynamic SPARQL query for determining and ordering the options based on the criteria. The significance of this suggestion and its tie-in with the current open linked data initative will be discussed. For more on linked data, see http://linkeddata.org/. Participants should become familiar with the work done by RPI Tetherless World Constellation at The Data-gov Wiki. (10 minutes)