ACADEMICS AND INDUSTRY JOIN FORCES TO TACKLE THE CHALLENGES OF TURNING INFORMATION INTO KNOWLEDGE
“The focus of the project is to tackle the fundamental processes needed to create a Knowledge-based Economy” says Professor Derek Sleeman
A team from the University of Aberdeen’s Department of Computing Science is part of a multi-million pound project to develop computer methods and software for the management and manipulation of knowledge in the information age. The project involves academics in five universities throughout the UK and major industrial companies.
The AKT (Advanced Knowledge Technologies) project has attracted a total of around £7Million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and it is expected that some £1Million of will come to the University of Aberdeen.
Professor Derek Sleeman, of the Department of Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen explained: “To ensure that the technology which the project produces is relevant, we will have a strong Industrial Liaison group and we will implement extensive Knowledge Management applications with a number of companies including Unilver and Rolls Royce. We hope to involve other companies from Scotland, particularly the North East, with the Aberdeen ‘arm’ of the project.
The researchers involved in the AKT consortium include specialists in computer science, artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, multimedia and Internet technology. The other universities involved are Edinburgh, Southampton, Sheffield and the Open University.
Professor Sleeman added: "Knowledge is clearly the most creative force in the modern economy. Its exploitation has revolutionised communications, services and industries, indeed everything from the food we eat to the medicine we take. With developments in telecommunications and the Internet, we have faster and better access to more and more of it. Despite the importance of knowledge, one of the problems we face is that well-know 21st century malady – information overload.
“Information is piled upon is, in databases, on the World Wide Web, and getting the right knowledge – useful information applied to solve a specific problem – is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“If knowledge is to be an asset in the knowledge economy, it has to be managed efficiently. The ability to use this knowledge successfully will be the chief source of the UK’s competitive advantage in a global economy.”
The contribution of the Aberdeen team will be three-fold:
* When large-scale Knowledge Bases are assembled they are frequently both incomplete and inconsistent and these shortcomings often come to light only when we try to solve problems. For the last decade, Professor Sleeman’s research group have developed Co-operative Systems which solves tasks. These systems interact with appropriate domain experts when they notice that knowledge is either missing or inconsistent.
*Aberdeen will be involved in developing techniques to ensure that out-of-date knowledge is deleted from Knowledge Bases. In some instances, it will be possible to “date-stamp” knowledge; in other cases it will be possible to specify that a 'knowledge chunk’ is dependent on an assumption and once the assumption is invalid, this ‘knowledge chunk’ can be deleted.
*Aberdeen will be involved in implementing a “Knowledge Bus” which will enable the different Knowledge sources to be read by a wide range of software packages which will be developed by the members of the Consortium.