CFP: OIC 2007: Ontology for the Intelligence Community

  

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prospective interested parties

 

NOTE: Paper submission date: July 15, 2007

 

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Call for Papers: OIC 2007: ONTOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

 

Towards Effective Exploitation and Integration of Intelligence
Resources

 

Hilton Hotel, Columbia, MD

 

November 28-30, 2007 

 

(November 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 (up to 1500
words) designed to serve as the basis for 20-minute oral presentations
at the conference. Accepted papers will be published (at speaker
discretion) in the proceedings, in both an online version and
prospectively a printed version. 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. 

 

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? how can we use domain ontologies to organize,
display and share intelligence analysis hypotheses while also
maintaining a clean distinction between types and instances in
knowledge representation artifacts?

 

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 <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