CFP: Agents 2001 Workshop on Ontologies in Agent Systems

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                               OAS 2001
               Workshop on Ontologies in Agent Systems
            
                          to be held at the
          5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents
                           Montreal, Canada

                            29th May 2001

              http://www.AutonomousAgents.org/2001/oas/
                            -------------

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Abstract
--------

 OAS2001 will provide a forum for the discussion and comparison of
 different approaches to the representation of ontologies for agent
 systems, the practical considerations of designing applications using
 these techniques and the infrastructural support required for their
 effective use.

 The workshop will be held at the Autonomous Agents 2001 conference
 taking place in Montreal, Canada from May 28 to June 1, 2001.

Important Dates
---------------

 Paper submission deadline:     Friday  9th March 2001
 Author notification:           Monday  2nd April 2001
 Camera-ready copy deadline:    Friday  13th April 2001
 Date of Workshop:              Tuesday 29th May 2001

Background 
----------

 The potential benefits and technical difficulties of sharing
 information between heterogeneous and distributed agents (both human
 and software) have led various research communities to develop
 techniques for explicitly modelling the concepts used within
 information sources and service-providing software to express their
 contents and responses.  Whether these conceptual models are called
 ontologies, schemas or data models, they enable applications to be
 assembled from loosely-coupled heterogeneous and distributed
 components. Many of these techniques can be applied or extended to
 the knowledge-level modelling and communication fundamental to
 multi-agent systems, and each brings its own trade-offs. Current
 widespread research and commercial activity in this area suggests
 that the communities involved would benefit from a forum to discuss
 issues in the wide-scale practical use of ontologies in agent
 systems:

 * There are increasing efforts to apply ontology modelling techniques
   to agent applications. 
 
 * Research efforts such as DARPA's CoABS Grid and Agentcities, as well
   as commercial developments like UDDI are working to link together
   large numbers of heterogenous systems. 

 * Initiatives such as ebXML and BizTalk are encouraging Industry to
   create a large amount of machine-readable ontological data. 

 These points indicate great potential for the practical use of
 ontologies within agent systems - both in research and commercial
 settings.

Workshop Objectives
-------------------

 Against this background the goal of the workshop is to provide a
 forum for the discussion of the practical use of ontologies in
 agent-based applications.

 Specifically the workshop aims to: 

 * Compare and contrast different ontology representation approaches
   for use in agent systems.

 * Address the practical considerations of designing applications using
   these techniques and the infrastructural support required for their
   effective use. 

 * Discuss the dependencies between ontologies and their supporting
   technologies and other aspects of agent systems such as agent
   architectures and communication mechanisms. 

 Throughout, emphasis will be on the discussion of ontologies with
 respect to the impact they have on agent architecture and application
 design in the context of agent systems.

Workshop Format
---------------

 The workshop will take place over one day and be divided into three
 technical sessions (provisionally these will be dedicated to the
 three primary workshop objectives) and one panel session to discuss
 issues arising during the day's discussions.

Topics of Interest
------------------

 The main topics of interest include but are not limited to:

 * Strengths and weaknesses of current ontology representation
   approaches for use with agents - both specific technologies and
   generic techniques such as logic-based and object-oriented
   approaches and those based on Semantic Web models. 

 * Relationships between ontology modelling languages and agent
   communication mechanisms: what are the dependencies between
   (for example) the semantics of a communication language and what
   can be expressed in the ontology? 

 * Techniques for translation between different ontology
   representation languages and coping with the evolution of
   ontologies.

 * Meta-modelling or other techniques for clarifying the relationship
   between ontologies and agents' messaging and reasoning systems. 

 * Practical experience in building agent systems using explicit
   ontologies to support communication. 

 * Requirements for ontology support in agent applications and agent
   toolkits including support access to existing (e.g. Web-based)
   ontology resources. 

 * Classifications identifying which approaches are most appropriate
   for particular applications or communication requirements. 

Paper Submission
----------------

 Since space is limited, participation is by invitation only.  All
 participants must submit either a short position statement or a
 full length paper.  Position statements may be no more than two
 pages and should describe a problem or research issue that you
 consider to be important or on which you are working.  Full length
 papers may be up to eight pages in length and should describe
 original work related to workshop topics.  

 Papers may be entirely new work, discussion papers weighing up
 different approaches, descriptions of applications or requirements,
 or accounts of practical experiences.  Accepted full length papers
 will be included in the proceedings and considered for presentation.
 Position statements may also be included in the proceedings at the
 discretion of the authors.

 Both kinds of papers should be formatted following the style of ACM
 conference proceedings.  Templates for Word, WordPerfect and LaTeX are
 available at: http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

 Submissions will be electronic only.  Submission details will be
 announced on the workshop Website in due course.
 
Publication
-----------

 All accepted papers will be available on the day of the workshop in a
 set of working notes. Arrangements are being made to publish selected
 papers in a special edition of a journal or other form of publication
 (details to be announced).

Registration
------------

 Workshop participants must register for the main Autonomous Agents
 2001 conference as well as this workshop by following the
 instructions at http://www.AutonomousAgents.org/2001/.

Organising Committee
-------------------- 

 Stephen Cranefield, University of Otago, New Zealand 
 Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA 
 Steve Willmott, Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, Switzerland 

Programme Committee
-------------------

 Federico Bergenti, Universita Degli Studi di Parma, Italy 
 Monique Calisti, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland 
 Patricia Charlton, Motorola Research, France 
 Ulises Cortes, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain 
 Stefan Decker, Stanford University, USA
 Stefan Haustein, Universitaet Dortmund, Germany 
 Pat Hayes, University of Western Florida, USA 
 James Hendler, DARPA/ISO/University of Maryland at College Park, USA
 Noriaki Izumi, Shizuoka University, Japan 
 Matthias Klusch, Deutsche Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz
                  - DFKI, Germany 
 Yannis Labrou, Powermarket.com, USA 
 Frank McCabe, Fujitsu Laboratories of America, USA 
 Ryusuke Masuoka, Fujitsu, Japan
 Martin Purvis, University of Otago, New Zealand 
 Frank van Harmelen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands 

Workshop Website
----------------

 http://www.AutonomousAgents.org/2001/oas/

Received on Sunday, 28 January 2001 21:40:27 UTC