WP1, Enterprise Knowledge Structures

WP1 investigates methods and tools that will leverage current Web 2.0-type-paradigms for knowledge articulation onto a new level of expressivity that allows capturing complex corporate knowledge. It will enable the easy articulation and sharing of such knowledge structures as well as techniques for the automatic refinement of enterprise knowledge. On the one hand, enterprise knowledge comprises knowledge about business resources, actors, their relations and characteristics (i.e. knowledge artifacts). On the other hand, it comprises descriptions of tasks, work contexts and the characteristics of the involved knowledge processes. Enterprise knowledge can be expressed in the form of simple tags, wiki annotations or standard Semantic Web languages.

The main objectives for research and development will be:

• Analysis of the synergies and investigation of the trade-off between lightweight, easy-to-use (i.e. Web 2.0-type) knowledge structures and necessary expressivity as provided by Semantic Web standards
• Structures for representing knowledge processes and their characteristics covering probabilistic temporal aspects
• Methods and tools for mapping between different conceptualizations and representation formalisms
• Methods and tools for collaborative articulation and sharing of enterprise knowledge at different levels of expressivity based on “Web 2.0” paradigms (e.g. semantic wikis)
• Methods and tools for automatically refining and repairing lightweight, incomplete and inconsistent knowledge

Tools will typically be implemented as portal-based solutions, with web-service type APIs for easy and flexible integration.