Final Call for Papers: OIC 2007: Ontology for the Intelligence Community, Nov. 28-30, 2007, Columbia, MD, USA (1 week for paper submissions)

Apologies for cross-postings; please forward to colleagues and
prospective interested parties.

NOTE: 1 week until paper submission date: July 15, 2007

NEWS: 

Registration is now open: see http://ncor.us/oic2007.

Plenary speakers will include David C. Roberts (Chief Technology 
Officer and Chief Data Architect, CIA) and Steven Robertshaw (Defence 
Science and Technology Laboratory, UK), and the program will also 
feature a special session on the topic OWL: Why, and Why Not? with 
panelists Bill Andersen (Ontology Works), Mike Dean (BBN 
Technologies), Leo Obrst (The MITRE Corporation), Barry Smith (NCOR), 
and Chris Welty (IBM Watson Research Center).

========================================

OIC 2007: ONTOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Towards Effective Exploitation and Integration of Intelligence
Resources

Hilton Hotel, Columbia, MD

November 28-30, 2007 (30th is CLASSIFIED: those with TS/SCI clearances
only and will be in Hanover, MD, near Columbia, MD).

The increasing volume, variety and velocity of intelligence analysis
requires new approaches that will enable greater flexibility,
precision, timeliness and automation of analysis to maximize valuable
human resources in responding to fast-evolving threats. 
Ontology-based technology as applied in areas such as bioinformatics
has demonstrated the possibility of gains along all of these
dimensions. The time is ripe to extend these gains also to other
spheres.

This conference will bring together experts on ontology-based
technology with particular experience in the problems facing the
intelligence community. It will feature invited talks from prominent
ontologists and intelligence community leaders, as well as submitted
papers focusing especially on the creation of public-domain ontology
resources to support the work of intelligence analysts.

Conference Director: Barry Smith (National Center for Ontological
Research, Buffalo)

Scientific Committee
Kathleen Stewart Hornsby (Maine) (Chair); Bill Andersen (Ontology
Works);
Selmer Bringsjord (Rensselaer); Werner Ceusters (Buffalo); Randall
Dipert
(Buffalo); Terry Janssen (Lockheed); Kathryn Laskey (George Mason
University); Kevin Lynch (CIA); Leo Obrst (MITRE); Chris Welty (IBM
Research)


CALL FOR PAPERS
Submissions are invited of short papers in pdf format (maximum: 1500
words, including all footnotes
and references) designed to serve as the basis for 20-minute oral
presentations at the conference.
Accepted papers will be published in a volume of CEUR Workshop
Proceedings. The authors of
selected papers will be invited to submit longer versions for
publication in volume 1 of a new series on
Ontology for the Intelligence Community, to be published by IOS Press.

Papers may address a wide variety of issues addressing the ontology
needs of the intelligence community. We are especially interested in
papers devoted to the task of creating an interoperable suite of
public-domain ontologies relevant to intelligence analysis, covering
areas such as:

         emergency response
         urban settings
         geospatial / cartographic
         ethnicity
         social networks
         images and imaging
         transportation
         moving object tracking
         religion and politics
         biology and health

The ontologies should be combinable at will in such a way as to support
the integration of data
describing different domains. We encourage submissions that describe
scenarios where multiple
ontologies are linked to support higher-order analysis and reasoning
over complex data. Questions to
be addressed might include: Which domains should be included in such a
suite of ontologies? How
can we ensure that ontologies interoperate in useful ways? How can we
address the specific
problems arising in virtue of the partiality and uncertainty of
intelligence data?

CLASSIFIED SESSION
A CLASSIFIED paper and presentation/demo day will be held on the 30th
only for those holding TS/SCI Clearances.  Related Intelligence
Community project participants are encouraged to submit unclassified
and classified presentations.  Because we are still in the process of
determining the submission procedure for this, UNCLASSIFIED inquiries
about CLASSIFIED submissions or procedures can be addressed to Leo
Obrst (lobrst@mitre.org) or Terry Janssen (terry.janssen@lmco.com).
Unclassified paper submissions with CLASSIFIED Demonstrations are also
encouraged. We will have more general guidelines for CLASSIFIED
submissions shortly.

Details on how to pass clearances, and to whom, will be provided to
those who sign up for the CLASSIFIED day on the 30th.

Deadlines
Receipt of papers: July 15, 2007
Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2007

Further information regarding submission will be provided in due course
at http://ncor.us/oic2007

For inquiries please write to ncor@buffalo.edu.

This meeting is sponsored by the NATIONAL CENTER FOR ONTOLOGICAL
RESEARCH - BUFFALO. 
 
_____________________________________________ 
Dr. Leo Obrst       The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics 
lobrst@mitre.org    Information Discovery & Understanding, Command and
Control Center
Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305 
Fax: 703-983-1379   McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA

Received on Monday, 9 July 2007 18:56:23 UTC