<div class="sectionTitle">Information Science Discussion Papers Series: 2001 Abstracts</div>

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<a name="dp2001-01"></a><h3>2001/01: Evolving fuzzy neural networks for on-line knowledge discovery</h3>
<h4>N. Kasabov</h4>

<p>Fuzzy neural networks are connectionist systems that facilitate learning from data, reasoning over fuzzy rules, rule insertion, rule extraction, and rule adaptation. The concept evolving fuzzy neural networks (EFuNNs), with respective algorithms for learning, aggregation, rule insertion, rule extraction, is further developed here and applied for on-line knowledge discovery on both prediction and classification tasks. EFuNNs operate in an on-line mode and learn incrementally through locally tuned elements. They grow as data arrive, and regularly shrink through pruning of nodes, or through node aggregation. The aggregation procedure is functionally equivalent to knowledge abstraction. The features of EFuNNs are illustrated on two real-world application problems&mdash;one from macroeconomics and another from Bioinformatics. EFuNNs are suitable for fast learning of on-line incoming data (e.g., financial and economic time series, biological process control), adaptive learning of speech and video data, incremental learning and knowledge discovery from growing databases (e.g. in Bioinformatics), on-line tracing of processes over time, life-long learning. The paper includes also a short review of the most common types of rules used in the knowledge-based neural networks for knowledge discovery and data mining.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>fuzzy rules
evolving fuzzy neural networks
on-line learning
macroeconomics
bioinformatics</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-01.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 707 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-02"></a><h3>2001/02: The Styx agent methodology</h3>
<h4>G. Bush, S. Cranefield and M.K. Purvis</h4>

<p>Agent-oriented software engineering is a promising new approach to software engineering that uses the notion of an agent as the primary entity of abstraction. The development of methodologies for agent-oriented software engineering is an area that is currently receiving much attention, there have been several agent-oriented methodologies proposed recently and survey papers are starting to appear. However the authors feel that there is still much work necessary in this area; current methodologies can be improved upon. This paper presents a new methodology, the Styx Agent Methodology, which guides the development of collaborative agent systems from the analysis phase through to system implementation and maintenance. A distinguishing feature of Styx is that it covers a wider range of software development life-cycle activities than do other recently proposed agent-oriented methodologies. The key areas covered by this methodology are the specification of communication concepts, inter-agent communication and each agent&rsquo;s behaviour activation&mdash;but it does not address the development of application-specific parts of a system. It will be supported by a software tool which is currently in development.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>agent-based software engineering
methodologies for agent-oriented software development</p>

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<a name="dp2001-03"></a><h3>2001/03: Implementing agent communication languages directly from UML specifications</h3>
<h4>S. Cranefield, M.K. Purvis and M. Nowostawski</h4>

<p>This paper proposes the use of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) as a formalism for defining an abstract syntax for Agent Communication Languages (ACLs) and their associated content languages. It describes an approach supporting an automatic mapping from high-level abstract specifications of language structures to specific computer language bindings that can be directly used by an agent platform. Some advantages of this approach are that it provides a framework for specifying and experimenting with alternative agent communication languages and reduces the error-prone manual process of generating compatible bindings and grammars for different syntaxes. A prototype implementation supporting an automatic conversion from an abstract communication language expressed in UML to a native Java API and a Resource Description Framework (RDF) serialisation format is described.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>agent communication languages,
abstract syntax,
UML,
XMI,
Java binding,
marshalling,
RDF</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-03.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 488 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-04"></a><h3>2001/04: UML and the Semantic Web</h3>
<h4>S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>This paper discusses technology to support the use of UML for representing ontologies and domain knowledge in the Semantic Web. Two mappings have been defined and implemented using XSLT to produce Java classes and an RDF schema from an ontology represented as a UML class diagram and encoded using XMI. A Java application can encode domain knowledge as an object diagram realised as a network of instances of the generated classes. Support is provided for marshalling and unmarshalling this object-oriented knowledge to and from an RDF/XML serialisation.</p>

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<a name="dp2001-05"></a><h3>2001/05: A layered approach for modelling agent conversations</h3>
<h4>M. Nowostawski, M.K. Purvis and S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>Although the notion of conversations has been discussed for some time as a way in which to provide an abstract representation of extended agent message exchange, there is still no consensus established concerning how to use these abstractions effectively. This paper describes a layered approach based on coloured Petri Nets that can be used for modelling complex, concurrent conversations among agents in a multi-agent system. The approach can be used both to define simple conversation protocols and to define more complex conversation protocols composed of a number of simpler conversations. With this method it is possible (a) to capture the concurrent characteristics of a conversation, (b) to capture the state of a conversation at runtime, and (c) to reuse conversation structures for the processing of multiple concurrent messages. A prototype implementation of such a system with some examples is described.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>agent communication languages
conversations
conversation protocols
Petri Nets
conversation monitoring and visualising</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-05.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 216 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-06"></a><h3>2001/06: A multi-level approach and infrastructure for agent-oriented software development</h3>
<h4>M. Nowostawski, G. Bush, M.K. Purvis and S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>An architecture, and the accompanying infrastructural support, for agent-based software developement is described which supports the use of agent-oriented ideas at multiple levels of abstraction. At the lowest level are micro-agents, which are robust and efficient implementations of streamlined agents that can be used for many conventional programming tasks. Agents with more sophisticated functionality can be constructed by combining these micro-agents into more complicated agents. Consequently the system supports the consistent use of agent-based ideas throughout the software engineering process, since higher level agents may be hierarchically refined into more detailed agent implementations. We outline how micro-agents are implemented in Java and how they have been used to construct the Opal framework for the construction of more complex agents that are based on the FIPA specifications.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>agents
multi-agent system
multi-agent platform scalability</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-06.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 293 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-07"></a><h3>2001/07: UML-based ontology modelling for software agents</h3>
<h4>S. Cranefield, S. Haustein and M.K. Purvis</h4>

<p>Ontologies play an important role in defining the terminology that agents use in the exchange of knowledge-level messages. As object-oriented modelling, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in particular, have built up a huge following in the field of software engineering and are widely supported by robust commercial tools, the use of UML for ontology representation in agent systems would help to hasten the uptake of agent-based systems concepts into industry. This paper examines the potential for UML to be used for ontology modelling, compares it to traditional description logic formalisms and discusses some further possibilities for applying UML-based technologies to agent communication systems.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-07.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 143 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-08"></a><h3>2001/08: Generating ontology-specific content languages</h3>
<h4>S. Cranefield and M.K. Purvis</h4>

<p>This paper examines a recent trend amongst software agent application and platform developers to desire the ability to send domain-specific objects within inter-agent messages. If this feature is to be supported without departing from the notion that agents communicate in terms of knowledge, it is important that the meaning of such objects be well understood. Using an object-oriented metamodelling approach, the relationships between ontologies and agent communication and content languages in FIPA-style agent systems are examined. It is shown how object structures in messages can be considered as expressions in ontology-specific extensions of standard content languages. It is also argued that ontologies must distingish between objects with and objects without identity. Traditionally ontologies are used in agent systems &ldquo;by reference&rdquo;. An agent is not required to explicitly reason with the ontology, or even to have an online copy available. The names of ontologies can simply be used as a contract between agents undertaking a dialogue: they each claim to be using an interpretation of the terms used in the conversation that conforms to the ontology. The content language uses a string-based syntax to represent sentences in the language which are constructed using constants and function and predicate symbols from the ontology as well as built-in language symbols such as &ldquo;and&rdquo; and &ldquo;or&rdquo;.</p>

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<a name="dp2001-09"></a><h3>2001/09: View-based consistency and its implementation</h3>
<h4>Z. Huang, C. Sun, M.K. Purvis and S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>This paper proposes a novel View-based Consistency model for Distributed Shared Memory. A view is a set of ordinary data objects that a processor has the right to access in a data-race-free program. The View-based Consistency model only requires that the data objects of a view are updated before a processor accesses them. Compared with other memory consistency models, the View-based Consistency model can achieve data selection without user annotation and can reduce much false-sharing effect. This model has been implemented based on TreadMarks. Performance results have shown that for all our applications the View-based Consistency model outperforms the Lazy Release Consistency model.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>distributed shared memory,
sequential consistency,
false sharing</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2001-09.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 139 KB)</p>

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<a name="dp2001-10"></a><h3>2001/10: Distributed information access in New Zealand</h3>
<h4>H. Nicholls and R. Gibb</h4>

<p>The purpose of this document is to describe the key technology issues for distributed information access in New Zealand. It is written from an industrial and public sector perspective, representing the views and findings of a wide cross-section of institutions in public and private sectors. It is an output of Objective 2 of the Distributed Information Systems project funded under contract UO0621 by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST).</p>

<p>It complements other project material produced by the academic research team at the University of Otago and its collaborators.</p>

<p>It focuses on requirements and applications, and is intended to provide a real-world, New Zealand-oriented context for the research in distributed information technologies (DIST).</p>

<p>The report represents the culmination of a series of workshops, industrial consultations, a questionnaire, and the experiences of the authors&rsquo; institutions during the project, and therefore it supplements any previously produced material.</p>

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<a name="dp2001-11"></a><h3>2001/11: Naturalistic decision making in emergency ambulance command and control</h3>
<h4>W. Wong and A. Blandford</h4>

<p>This paper reports on a field study into the nature of decision making in the command and control of emergency ambulances at the London Ambulance Service (LAS). This paper will describe how real-time decisions are made by emergency medical dispatchers and the decision strategies they invoke as they assess the situation, plan and co-ordinate the dispatch of emergency ambulances.</p>

<p>A cognitive task analysis approach known as the Critical Decision Method (Hoffman et al., 1998; Klein et al., 1989) was used in the study. The study showed that decision making in emergency ambulance command and control involves four major processes&mdash;assessment of the situation, assessment of resources, planning, and co-ordinating and control. These four processes function within an awareness of goings-on in and around the sectors that the dispatchers operate in. This awareness is referred to as situation awareness and is being reported elsewhere (Wong &amp; Blandford, submitted). The decision making process resembles the decision making described by naturalistic decision making models (see (Zsambok &amp; Klein, 1997) for an extensive discussion on the topic) and is an extension of the Integrated Decision Model (Wong, 1999). The study also suggested that a lot of effort was directed at understanding and assessing the situation and in maintaining a constant awareness of the situation. These observations have significant implications for the design of information systems for command and control purposes. These implications will be discussed separately in another paper.</p>

<p>The paper will first introduce the domain of EMD at the LAS, then explain how the Critical Decision Method was used in the data collection and in the data anlaysis. It will then describe how decisions are made, particularly during major incidents, and then discuss the implications of those findings for the design of command and control systems.</p>


<p><a href="papers/dp2001-11.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 204 KB)</p>