Decision Mtg 5 Agenda

Decision Meeting #5 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.

Summary and Action Items from the Last Meeting

At the last meeting (see minutes), Jeff described his plan to specialize the Transition pattern to address the Information Flow use case; Eva presented an overview of a subset of the content ontology design patterns most applicable for a decision format, such as Situation, Process, Transition, and ControlFlow; Jeff provided an overview of EDXL Emergency Management Standards relevant for understanding the emergency management use case; and there was a brief mention of the use of SPARQL for decision metric assessment.

The core Action Items include applying the Transition pattern (Jeff), adding and fleshing out use cases (all), and selecting and modeling decision components (all).

Goal for this Meeting

At this fifth meeting of the Decision Incubator, the goal is to review the use cases to identify what's missing, review the core components, and determine next steps for modeling which components; summarize the results of applying the Transition pattern; a discussion of one of the core components, an Event; and a consideration of next steps for pursuing the Open Linked Data Use Case including education on taxonomies and interest in and tools for rdf-enabling data sources, such as emergency management.

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)

Initial modeling has begun with the transition pattern and practical experience is being gained on use of Neon with the eXtreme Design plugin and the ontology design patterns. The near-term goal is to build on this experience to model additional decision components.

(2) Review of Use Cases & Core Components: What's Missing? (15 min, Jeff)

We'll take a quick look at the use cases and briefly discuss what's missing. Should there be a use case addressing each significant component of the decision format? If so, let's take a quick look at those. What domains are of particular interest?

(3) 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.

(4) Example Core Component: The Event Pattern (15 minutes)

Let's discuss a very basic component needed in a decision format, an "event" component. An event could be anything that happens, including the decision itself or any asserted statement. From a journalism perspective, the interesting components of an event are who, what, where, when, how and why. Is there a good model for representing this in an agile, lightweight manner that could be reused wherever needed? What is the purpose and scope of this event component for decision-making?

(5) Open Linked Data and Use Cases: Progress and Next Steps(15 minutes)

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 current progress to understand the best ways to utilize open linked data in a decision format and next steps to accomplish this goal. 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. A good tutorial on the use of SPARQL with Open Linked Data is available at http://www.slideshare.net/fulvio.corno/sparql-and-the-open-linked-data-initiative.