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ONTOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Tuesday, October 20 Tutorial

08:20 - 09:00		Registration and Breakfast
09:00 - 10:20		Tutorial Session 1
		Syntax, Semantics, Ontology Spectrum, Taxonomies
10:20 - 10:40		Coffee Break
10:40 - 12:00		Tutorial Session 2
		Thesauri, Conceptual Models, Logical Theories (Strong Ontologies)
12:00 - 01:20		Lunch Break
01:20 - 02:40		Tutorial Session 3
		Knowledge Representation, Logic, Ontological Engineering
02:40 - 03:00		Coffee Break
03:00 - 04:20		Tutorial Session 4
		The Semantic Web

Wednesday, October 21

08:30 - 09:30		Registration and Breakfast
09:30 - 09:40		Welcome
09:40 - 10:40		Keynote Address
	Chris Welty - The Evolving Role of Rules and Ontologies in the Semantic Web As the semantic web evolves with new standards (like OWL-2 and RIF), and more data (like Linked Open Data), the role of ontologies and rules in semantic web applications is evolving as well. In this talk I will briefly present highlights of the new standards and discuss where the technology and data seem to be taking us, and what role they will play as the web of data continues to evolve. (Bio)
10:40 - 11:00		Coffee Break
11:00 - 11:40	Plenary Paper Session
11:00 - 11:40		Substance-Blind Classification of Evidence for Intelligence Analysis paper	David Schum, Gheorge Tecuci, and Mihai Boicu
	Abstract Intelligence analysis requires the development of arguments that link evidence to hypotheses by establishing and fusing the relevance, believability and inferential force or weight of a wide variety of items of evidence of different types. This pa- per presents several substance-blind classifications of evidence which are based on these inferential characteristics and facilitate the clarification of many uncertainties lurking in intelligence analysis. It also shows how the Disciple-LTA cognitive assistant uses these classifications to develop Wigmorean probabilistic inference networks for assessing the likelihood of hypotheses.
11:40 - 01:20		Lunch Break
01:20 - 03:20		Plenary Paper Session
01:20 - 02:00		Towards an Effective Methodology for Rapidly Developing Component-Based Domain Ontologies paper	Troy Self and Dave Kolas
	Abstract As the Intelligence Community migrates from a paradigm of using disjoint, data and application stovepipes to a paradigm of shared knowledge and networked component services, the cost of developing appropriate domain ontologies becomes a concern. In this paper, we present a methodology for rapidly developing composite domain ontologies by linking and reusing existing ontologies. We will compare composite domain ontologies to component- based software engineering, present a metric for measuring the compositeness of an ontology, and describe a composite domain ontology developed for real world use.
02:00 - 02:40		Supporting the Analytic Knowledge Manager: Formal Methods for Ontology Display and Management paper	Alan Chappell, Anthony Bladek, Cliff Joslyn, Eric Marshall, Liam McGrath, Patrick Paulson, Sean Stolberg, and Amanda White
	Abstract The Intelligence Community and other analytic-focused communities are developing and implementing large knowledge bases and semantic-based systems. These systems require new activities for managing their ontological underpinning, including a range of tasks from supporting domain description and evolution to integrating multiple source of semantic information. Beyond the role of the analyst or the traditional data base administrator, the role of the knowledge manager as the point of focus for such activities is growing in prominence. We are developing methods and tools to provide an analytical ability for the display and management of ontological systems, rooted in the formal properties of semantic relations in semantic graphs, and the semantic hierarchies in which they are valued. We describe methods for display, integration, and management of ontological resources to support the emerging Analytical Knowledge Manager with the AKEA tool.
02:40 - 03:20		Contributions to a Semantically-Based Intelligence Analysis Enterprise Workflow System paper	Robert Schrag, Jon Pastor, Chris Long, Eric Peterson, Mark Cornwell, and Lance Forbes
	Abstract We have contributed key elements of a semantically based intelligence analysis enterprise workflow architecture: a uniformly accessible semantic store conforming to an enterprise- wide ontology; a branching context representation to organize workflow components' analytical hypotheses; a logic programming-based, forward-chaining query language for components to access data from the store; and a software toolkit embracing all the foregoing to streamline the process of introducing additional legacy software components as semantically interoperable workflow building blocks. We explain these contributions, focusing particularly on the toolkit. For certain widely used input/output formats-e.g., comma-separated value (CSV) files-a knowledgeable user can quickly "wrap" a newly installed component for workflow operation by providing a compact and entirely declarative specification that uses the query language to map specific relation arguments in the ontology to specific structural elements in the component's native input and output formats. Our contributions are built to work with AllegroGraph, from Franz, Inc.
03:20 - 03:40		Coffee Break
03:40 - 05:00		Plenary Paper Session
03:40 - 04:20		Universal Core Semantic Layer paper	Barry Smith, Lowell Vizenor, and James Schoening
	Abstract The Universal Core (UCore) is a central element of the National Information Sharing Strategy that is supported by multiple U.S. Federal Government Departments, by the intelligence community, and by a number of other national and international institutions. The goal of the UCore initiative is to foster information sharing by means of an XML schema providing consensus representations for four groups of universally understood terms under the headings who, what, when, and where. We here describe a project to create an ontology-based supporting layer for UCore, entitled 'Universal Core Semantic Layer' (UCore SL), and describe how UCore SL can be applied to further UCore's information sharing goals.
04:20 - 05:00		Referent Tracking for Command and Control Messaging Systems paper	Shahid Manzoor, Werner Ceusters, and Barry Smith
	Abstract The Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) is an XML-based language designed to allow Command and Control (C2) systems to interface easily with Modeling and Simulation (M&S) systems. While some of the XML-tags defined in this language correspond to types of entities that exist in reality, others are mere syntactic artifacts used to structure the messages themselves. Because these two kinds of tags are not formally distinguishable, JBML messages in effect confuse data with what the data represent. In this paper we show how a realism-based ontology combined with a rule language can be used to make these distinctions explicit. The approach allows storage of the contents of JBML messages in a Referent Tracking System in a format that mimics the structure of reality thereby providing an aid to message validation.
05:30		Transportation to Marriott
06:00 - 08:00		Conference Dinner

Thursday, October 22

08:30 - 09:00		Breakfast
09:00 - 10:00		Keynote Address
	Doug Lenat - Mistakes Were Made Douglas Lenat founded and has run the Cyc project since 1984, leading a team building a large and broad ontology, knowledge base, and inference engine. This talk will describe some of the lessons learned along the way, ranging from representation of knowledge, to choice of what knowledge to represent, to knowledge acquisition methodologies, to reasoning strategies and tactics. It will showcase some of the applications that forced Cyc to grapple with large amounts of data, multiple sources, contradictory information, and so on, which have largely come from the intelligence community and (perhaps surprisingly, to this audience) from the clinical research community. Dr. Lenat's work in machine learning won the Computers and Thought Award; he helped establish the AAAI, and is a Fellow of the AAAI and of the AAAS. Prior to Cyc, Dr. Lenat was a computer science faculty member at Stanford and CMU, and he will briefly touch on a few "learning experiences" he had back then, that laid the foundation for his being able to make the mistakes of the last 25 years. paper
10:00 - 10:20		Coffee Break
10:20 - 11:40		Plenary Paper Session
10:20 - 11:00		An Ontological Approach to Information Access Control and Provenance paper	Bill Andersen and Fabian Neuhaus
	Abstract The need to share information among intelligence agencies with different responsibilities and at different levels of government has long been recognized. Only recently, however, has the requirement to share been elevated to a priority backed by policy. Existing approaches to multilevel security are insufficient to solve the sharing problem. First, each agency has legitimate reasons for maintenance of access control requirements that suit internal needs but are difficult to reconcile between agencies. Nevertheless, this problem must be solved if we expect agencies to share their information. Second, any access control scheme must simultaneously address the issue of information provenance. Without trust in shared information, consumers are unlikely use it, defeating the purpose of sharing. In this paper we pursue an approach to the combined problems of access control and provenance that centers on an ontological analysis of the relevant entities involvedâ €“ information systems, information encoding in the form of linguistic tokens, and the relevant kinds of events in which these entities participate. The approach is presented as a logical theory that deals with information explicitly encoded in formal languages. In future work we expect to extend it to other important cases such as images, video, audio, or physical artifacts such as paper documents.
11:00 - 11:40		Course of Action Planning Ontology paper	Timothy Darr
	Abstract This paper describes an ontology to support course of action (COA) planning that provides an extensible framework for modeling COA plans consistent with Army and Marine Corp doctrine. This ontology is structured into a core ontology that includes definitions of common COA planning concepts (activities, phases, outcomes, measures-of-performance, measures-of-effectiveness, etc.), and multiple domain-specific ontologies that extend the core ontology for specific types of plans (stability operations, counterinsurgency planning, information operations planning, etc.). A preference relation between descriptions of the "plan state" using measures-of-effectiveness is introduced to allow subject-matter experts to specify a ranking over plan activities or phases from a specific Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) perspective. These preferences can be used in the planning process to identify or prune black holes and blind alleys.
11:40 - 01:20		Lunch Break
01:20 - 02:00		Plenary Paper Session
01:020 - 02:00		Higher Order Uncertainty and Evidential Ontologies	Justin Brody
	Abstract The uncertainties implicit in intelligence gathering are not only about the state of the world, but also about the ways in which varying contexts should affect the degree to which a proposition is believed. We call this latter form of uncertainty {\it higher order uncertainty}, and argue that the introduction of a logical operator to K. Laskey's MEBN specification can allow for learning about such uncertainty to occur.
02:00 - 02:40		Plenary Discussion
		NCOR	Barry Smith
	Abstract The National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR) was founded in 2005 with the goal of advancing ontological research within the United States. NCOR founded the OIC series, and is a co-organizer of the annual Ontology Summit in Gaithersburg, MD. Currently, NCOR is funded to provide ontology support to the US Army Net-Centric Data Strategy Center of Excellence, especially in the context of the Federal Government UCore initiative. NCOR's long-term goal is to provide coordination, infrastructure, and other forms of support for those working in theoretical and applied ontology, with a special focus on ontology standards, empirical measures of ontology quality, and dissemination of ontology best practices. This session is designed to serve as a public discussion on the question how best these ends can be realized in the future.
02:40 - 03:00		Coffee Break
03:00 - 04:00		Panel Discussion
		The Future of the OIC	Panel: Leo Obrst, Cliff Joslyn,
			Bob Schrag, and Dave Kolas
	Abstract Where do we go from here? We want to combine government, contractor, and academic participation in a joint conference that focuses on the use of ontologies (and semantic technologies more generally) in and for the intelligence community. We want to have sound research papers and sound application papers, both peer-reviewed, with the emphasis on assisting the intelligence community. We also want to have a Classified Session, so that needed conversations occur within the intelligence community in this focused environment concerning the use of ontologies, and they are more apt to occur at TS/SCI levels. What do we want the OIC to be? Where do we want to go? How do we want to evolve? What do we want OIC 2010 to be? The panelists have participated in one OIC (this one) or many. They have been involved in applications of ontologies for the intelligence community Đ for a short time or for a very long time. They will discuss what, where, and how. We will all talk about the future of OIC.
04:00 - 04:10		Wrap Up