Automation of knowledge representation and modelling

Knowledge management is a combination of the domains information is applied to and the technology used to represent this knowledge. The main domains I'm involved for representing this knowledge are engineering (process and design), and economics. The Semantic Web is key to this, but the Semantic web also involves many back end computing technologies such as databases/ontologies, and software tools/translation to represent this semantics/knowledge. To test this approach an application is necessary, to show benefits of the Semantic Web/knowledge management, and a way of testing it on the above domain. For my work, this problem used for testing is modelling, but in order to enable modelling using computing technologies, it is essential to make the modelling tools available to as great a range as possible of end-users. So this brings in the need for end-user programming, as to create models, it is necessary to program.

So my research area is as in the shaded ares of the diagram below -

Knowledge management and modelling are time consuming and difficult, this is only partly because of the technologies used, but my research focusses mainly on the technologies. When there are problems in keeping up with the needs of people, such as productivity problems in manufacturing, one of the solutions has been to mechanise this. So the mechanism I'm working on applies this idea to software. I'm working on enabling modelling, and programming for modelling, and what is necessary to ease this problem is provision of a machine. This machine undertakes translation and automated production of models from information. This is similar to the ideas behind virtual machines, interpreters, compilers, and UML tools, but there is more interaction with the users in the tools created for this research. So this enables customisation, at the same time as automation.

The models created are at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/EconomicModels/ModelsVisualised.htm.

More explanation of this research is at - http://sites.google.com/site/userdrivenmodellingprogramming/.