Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Tegrid Semantic Web Application, Steven Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Over the past several years there has been an increasing recognition of the shortcomings of message-passing data-processing systems that compute data without understanding, and the vastly superior potential capabilities of information-centric systems that incorporate an internal information model with sufficient context to support a useful level of automatic reasoning.

The key difference between a data-processing and an information-centric environment is the ability to embed in the information-centric software some understanding of the information being processed. The term information-centric refers to the representation of information in the computer, not to the way it is actually stored in a digital machine. This …

Proceedings Of The 2002 Onr Decision-Support Workshop Series: Transformation..., Collaborative Agent Design Research Center

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

In August of 1998 the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), approached Dr. Phillip Abraham of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the proposal for an annual workshop focusing on emerging concepts in decision-support systems for military applications. The proposal was considered timely by the ONR Logistics Program Office for at least two reasons. First, rapid advances in information systems technology over the past decade had produced distributed, collaborative computer-assistance capabilities with profound potential for providing meaningful support to military decision makers. Indeed, some systems based on …

The Role Of Discovery In Context-Building Decision-Support Systems, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

There are many sources of on-line information available to those responsible for making decisions in complex situations. However, most of that information is either intended for human use or is available only in custom or proprietary formats. Both of these conditions reduce the ability of computer software to perform automatic reasoning about this information. As a result, the usefulness of on-line information in intelligent decision-support systems is currently limited to the few sources that are implemented specifically for those systems. The vast mass of sources that do not fit that description are virtually invisible.

Current practices for integrating multiple information …

Data, Information, And Knowledge In The Context Of Sils, Michael A. Zang, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Data, information, and knowledge are becoming increasingly common terms in the literature of the software industry. This terminology originated some time ago in the disciplines of cognitive science and artificial intelligence to reference three closely related but distinct concepts. Traditionally, mainstream software engineering has lumped all three concepts together as data and has only recently begun to distinguish between them. Unfortunately, the popular desire to distinguish between data, information, and knowledge within the mainstream has blurred the individual meanings of the words to the point where there is no longer a clear-cut distinction between them for most people. This problem …

Context Building Information-Centric Decision-Support Systems, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

As the volume of data and human-centered information available to decision-makers continues to increase at an ever-accelerating rate, the need to represent information in software-processable formats becomes more apparent. At the same time, the availability of information from diverse sources through the World Wide Web provides the opportunity to widen the scope of input to decision-support systems, if this information can be made accessible through automated means. Past approaches to information-centric interoperability have been based on the use of a shared static object model, but this becomes impractical when we consider the loosely-coupled decentralized nature of the Web.

This paper …

Some Thoughts On Human Nature: A Discussion Of Human Strenghts And Weaknesses, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This paper attempts to explore the behavioral characteristics of human beings from a point of view that is not based on inter-human comparisons, but on an examination of the intrinsic physical, biological, intellectual, emotional, and social characteristics of this species. It is argued that the experience-based nature of the human cognitive system greatly reduces our ability to adapt to changes in our environment, exploit opportunities, and create new knowledge. A fundamental biological survival instinct drives the human being to seek a level of certainty and security that is irreconcilable with a continuously changing and largely unpredictable environment. The symptoms of …

The Underlying Design Principles Of The Icdm Development Toolkit, Kym J. Pohl, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

For the past sixteen years the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo has pursued the design and development of agent-based decision-support systems. Throughout this journey the CADRC has relied on a suite of development tools that greatly assist in the creation and management of such systems. This suite of tools is known as the Integrated Cooperative Decision-Making (ICDM) software development toolkit.

Not only does ICDM function as an accelerator (i.e., rapid development) and stabilizer (i.e., built-in robustness and fault tolerance) in the development of decision-support systems, but it also …

The Value Of Ontology-Based, Service-Oriented, Distributed Systems In A High Bandwidth Environment, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

No abstract provided.