Re: categorization of information/priority

Sure, perhaps the best practical way of improving this is to merge  
the collaborative document development process with an ontology so  
that all elements or a plan are marked up as the plan is written and  
modified. Some aspects that could be tagged in a response plan include:

  * Response structure diagram
  * Functions
     * Planning
     * Intelligence
     * Logistics etc
  * Role description
     * Relationships (reports to, manages, liaises with)
     * Responsibilities
  * Processes
     * Activation
     * Notification
       * Contact list
     * Standing down

Text in the plan could be tagged - such that a position description  
in a response plan could be represented by XML using the ontology. As  
well as using this for display formatting and producing plans using a  
consistent format (agencies often have to have a number of different  
organisations plans to hand - and they always use different  
formatting and markup), the content would also be marked-up using the  
ontology.

The nifty part would come when you could take a plan that is marked  
up like this, throw it at say Sahana (I'm biased of course ;) ) and  
have it customise the Sahana configuration based upon the computer- 
readable definitions contained within the plan. E.g building up  
default software users in Sahana based upon the response structure,  
and role descriptions. Customising a Sahana server could be as quick  
and easy as importing your plan! Of course, the obvious thing to do  
would be to create a module that combines all this so that any  
realtime changes in the plan are reflected in the Sahana server  
hosting it. As was previously discussed on HICT - we want to get this  
sort of integration into Sahana so that the plan and technology  
enabler are completely integrated.

E.g. within the plan may be a list of people that need to be notified  
if a certain event occurs. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the simple act  
of editing the plan dynamically modified the actual group within the  
messaging module as soon as the change is submitted (and approved if  
required). And a link is created automatically next to the list in  
the plan that takes the user directly to the form to send out an  
alert using the messaging module.

This is the sort of integration that will really wow emergency  
managers, but it requires an ontology for the underlying data so the  
computer can understand it and know what to do with it.

Is that the sort of thing you were after Paola?

Cheers Gav


On 12/06/2007, at 17:39, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:

> I think the categorization of information is something that we  
> should work alongside with
>
> at the moment when I search, as you suggest 'functional response  
> plans' I retrieve a bunch of unstructured links, with no
> apperent logic/functional cluster attached to it
>
> It would be good if we could find a way of  adding a categorization  
> layer that 'sorts' these search results
> into broad categories, this is generallay done trhough metatada,  
> tags  or other superstructures like RDF
>
> I believe this is something that many of us in the internet  
> research and ontology community are already working on,  and  
> probably a priority on googles 'to do' list too, so maybe this  
> could be included in the scope of this workgroup too?
> ideas?

Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 11:09:48 UTC