Modelling bridges the gap between the acquisition of knowledge and its use. Knowledge model structures must be able to represent knowledge so that it can be used for problem-solving. One important knowledge modelling idea is that of ontologies, which are specifications of the generic concepts, attributes, relations and axioms of a knowledge base or domain. Ontologies can act as placeholders and organising structures for acquired knowledge, while also providing a format for understanding how knowledge will be used.

In knowledge modelling, the central issue with which our vision is concerned is the semantic web. The Internet and the WWW are clearly key focuses of AKT's future development and exploitation, and we will need to track and influence the development of the semantic web. AKT shall investigate the emerging suite of languages for expressing knowledge and exploiting the possibilities of the semantic web. The use of ontologies, will be a central idea to look at here, but will not be the only focus of our work.

There will also be a drive to examine special-purpose modelling formalisms for particular important subsets of discourse. One example will be the modelling of best practice procedures; the dissemination and sharing of best practice across an organisation or firm is clearly going to be one of the most important applications of knowledge sharing. Another example, again central to our user base's concerns, is the modelling of argumentation and design rationales. Often with an artefact - which may be a piece of knowledge as well as a concrete object - knowing what design decisions, constraints and pressures led to the creation of an object of that particular form is key to understanding a domain.

Finally, we are also working on the next generation of general purpose tools to support knowledge markup (i.e. enabling users to enrich web content semantically). These tools assist in the creation of one or more semantic layers from different perspectives, using different ontologies, and amenable to multiple representations for different user groups.

AKT Publications addressing issues in Knowledge Modelling --