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Introduction
SWAP combines two
highly successful technologies, viz. Semantic Web and Peer-to-peer
computing. SWAP will develop the technology that is necessary
to allow users their individual views on knowledge AND let them
share knowledge effectively. In order to allow for individual
views, every user’s PC is treated as a peer and every user may
ask queries to the network of peers. In order to actually find
the right piece of knowledge, SWAP employs Semantic Web technology.
Current peer-to-peer technology only allows for keyword search
and lacks the semantics that is necessary for effective, precise
knowledge sharing. Current knowledge repositories lack the capability
to provide really individual views in a decentralized framework
with low administration overhead. SWAP will produce both.
The combination
of Semantic Web and Peer-to-peer is highly innovative with prospective
benefits to the individualization of work views as well as to
the facilitation of knowledge sharing between peers. SWAP will
tackle the semantic challenges brought up by this novel combination
such that knowledge finding and sharing is effectively possible.
The basic infrastructure will build on already available Open
Source peer-to-peer solutions. The work package structure of SWAP
has been constructed in order to handle the high degree of innovation
set out in the project goals, viz. it allows for fast adoption
of new techniques and scientific achievements, but ensures effective
development of the envisioned objectives. In particular: 1. SWAP
will offer a Conceptual Analysis of the problem. The analysis
comprises the use of semantic web technology in peer-to-peer computing,
but it will also consider how emergent semantics may be constructed
by overlapping knowledge structures of different peers (e.g. common
categorizations of knowledge, common bookmark names of web pages).
2. SWAP will explore the conceptual architectures made possible
by this combination. They constitute the foundations for the subsequent
integration task as well as for further exploitation. 3. SWAP
will investigate new methods to realize a Semantic Web based peer-to-peer
system. 4. The methods will be implemented in a set of tools.
5. The tools will be integrated based on the foundations from
the conceptual architectures in a demonstrator that can be tested
in case studies. 6. The tool environment will be evaluated in
two case studies about Knowledge Management for investment analysts
and about Knowledge Sharing between SMEs (virtual enterprises).
Concrete results of SWAP will be:
- A comprehensive study of the
potential of Semantic Web and P2P for KM and a corresponding
methodology.
- Method descriptions and
software prototypes for P-Oc, P-Al, P-Map, P-Viz, P-I, P-Up
and P-S.
- An integrated software
environment for semantic P2P, rigorously tested and validated
in real world KM scenarios.
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Objectives
In today’s knowledge-based
economy, the competitiveness of enterprises and the quality of
work life are directly tied to the ability to effectively create
and share knowledge both within and across organizations. Emerging
peer-to-peer solutions are particularly well suited to the increasingly
decentralized nature of today’s organizations, be it a single
enterprise or a dynamic network of organizations. They make it
possible for different participants (organizations, individuals,
or departments within an organization) to maintain different views
of the world while exchanging information. They also circumvent
the bottlenecks associated with more traditional solutions, which
rely on one or a small number of centralized servers. At the same
time, because they rely on keyword search and rather simple knowledge
representation techniques, today’s peer-to-peer solutions are
extremely limited. They cannot easily support the introduction
of new concepts, make it difficult to determine whether two terms
are equivalent, and generally can only support very limited levels
of automation – all types of functionality, which Semantic Web
technologies have been shown to support.
SWAP is about demonstrating
that the power of Peer-to-Peer computing and the Semantic Web
can actually be combined to support decentralized environments
where participants can maintain individual views of the world,
while sharing knowledge in ways such that administration efforts
are low, but knowledge sharing and finding is easy. Key to the
success of combining Peer-to-Peer solutions with Semantic Web
technologies is the use of Emergent Semantics. Emergent
semantics builds on light-weight and/or heavy-weight ontologies
that different individuals, departments, or organizations have
created. It considers the overlap between ontology definitions
and the use of concepts and relations with actual data in order
to extract shared ontologies for sets of individuals or groups
of people. Intelligent tools will use such definitions to ensure
that knowledge will be appropriately structured, so that it can
be easily refound. Knowledge Management can occur in a distributed
fashion without overhead through central administration.
Two case studies
of knowledge intensive work, knowledge management for investment
analysts (called KM case study) and knowledge sharing between
SMEs (called virtual enterprise case study) will evaluate and
improve the new combined technology. |
Partners
| Participant
Name |
Country |
Role |
|
UNIKARL
(Universität
Karlsruhe TH) |
Germany |
Technical coordinator and
researcher |
|
VU
(Vereniing
voor Christelijk Wetenshappelijk Onderwijs)
|
The Netherlands |
Researcher |
|
META4
(Meta4
Spain, S.A.)
|
Spain |
Knowledge Management
Expert |
|
EMPOLIS
UK
(Empolis
UK limited)
|
United Kingdom |
Technology provider |
|
EMPOLIS
POLSKA
(Empolis
Polska Sp. z.o.o.)
|
Poland |
Technology provider |
|
IBIT
(Fundación
IBIT)
|
Spain |
User |
|
DRESDNER
BANK (Dresdner
Bank AG) |
Germany |
User |
Consortium
Description
The project features a highly complementary set of partners, which jointly bring all
the required expertise to the project:
Expertise |
Partner |
| Semantic Web, Emerging Semantics |
UNIKARL, Germany, http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS: is a
university institute renowned for its research in Knowledge Management and the Semantic
Web and the integration of these techniques with information extraction from
natural language texts and data mining. |
| Agents, Ontology Formalisation, Semantic Web |
VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
http://www.cs.vu.nl: is a university institute, which
is world-wide known for its contribution to Agent technology, to the Semantic
Web and to Semantic Web standards. |
| Knowledge Management Platform |
META4, Spain, http://www.meta4.com: A company specialised in payroll, HR
and KM applications, which is one of the current worldwide leaders in the KM sector. It is
the main contractor and will lead the WP devoted to conceptual design and dissemination. |
| Ontology navigation and search |
empolis, UK, http://www.empolis.co.uk: empolis UK is a knowledge
management platform vendor focusing on intelligent retrieval of existing documents using
explicit knowledge models. Objective of empolis is to develop, employ, and support a
method that builds-up and maintains a distributed knowledge model. Empolis is a subsidiary
of Bertelsmann, which owns Napster, and heavily interested in P2P models. |
| Software integration |
Empolis, Polska, http://www.empolis.pl/: empolis Polska has a strong
expertise in XML, SGML, topic maps and software integration. |
| Application partner Knowledge Management |
Dresdner Bank, Germany, http://www.dresdner-bank.de: is one of the major
European banks that provides the full range of services to its clients from retail banking
to investment banking. In order to provide the best service to its customers. Its research
department is interested in better knowledge management solutions for the financial
analysts that provides them with the most up-to-date knowledge and allows for extensive
sharing of knowledge between the individual analysts for advantage to its clients. |
| Application partner, Virtual Enterprises, Tourism, SMEs,
Telematics |
IBIT, Spain, http://www.ibit.org:
IBIT Foundation is
the Balearic Government’s co-ordination center of telematics innovative European
projects for the development of programs to support the Balearics Society in particular
with regard to the action lines tourism, SMEs, E-Health and Public Administration.
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In addition,
VU Amsterdam will give a small subcontract to Prof. Norman
Sadeh of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU),
Pittsburgh. CMU has collected many experiences in "agentifying"
its campus with mobile computers. The subcontractor will apply
the SWAP tools and technology to this scenario. This will
allow the SWAP consortium to get a high-value, high-visibility
and high-quality third case almost for free.
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Funding
SWAP is a project funding as a shared-cost
R&D undo the European Commission
Information Societies Technology (IST)
programme.
Administrative Details
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Proposal
Number:
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ST-2001-34103
|
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Total
Budget:
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3.315.525
|
Euro
|
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EC
Contribution:
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2.274.069
|
Euro
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Start Date and Duration
Start Date: 1 April 2002
End Date: 30 September 2004
Duration: 30 months
Copyright
© 2002, SWAP Consortium
Last update: 20 Dec 2002
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