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OIC-2007: Ontology for the Intelligence Community - Effective Exploitation and Integration of Intelligence Resources

This article discusses the development of an ontology for the intelligence community, aiming to effectively exploit and integrate intelligence resources. It explores the concept of referent tracking and the requirements for a faithful representation of reality, allowing for queries, predictions, and identification of mistakes.

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OIC-2007: Ontology for the Intelligence Community - Effective Exploitation and Integration of Intelligence Resources

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  1. OIC-2007 - ONTOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY:Towards Effective Exploitationand Integration of Intelligence ResourcesHow to Keep Track ofAbsolutely EverythingColumbia, MD - November 28, 2007 Werner CEUSTERS Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences University at Buffalo, NY, USA http://www.org.buffalo.edu/RTU

  2. A digital copy of the world Ultimate goal of Referent Tracking

  3. Requirements for this digital copy • R1: A faithful representation of reality • R2 … of everything that is digitally registered, what is generic scientific theories what is specific what individual entities exist and how they relate • R3: … throughout reality’s entire history, • R4 … which is computable in order to … … allow queries over the world’s past and present, … make predictions, … fill in gaps, … identify mistakes, ...

  4. In fact … the ultimate crystal ball

  5. The ‘binding’ wall How to do it right ?

  6. Requirements for a digital copy of the world • R1: A faithful representation of reality • R2 … of everything that is digitally registered, what is generic scientific theories what is specific what individual entities exist and how they relate • R3: … throughout reality’s entire history, • R4 … which is computable in order to … … allow queries over the world’s past and present, … make predictions, … fill in gaps, … identify mistakes, ...

  7. R1: A faithful representation of reality … … recognizes three levels: • The (first order) reality which exists ‘as it is’ prior to a cognitive agent’s perception thereof; • the cognitive representations of this reality embodied in observations and interpretations on the part of cognitive agents; • the publicly accessible concretizations constructed through cognitive insights as artifacts representing first order reality of which ontologies, terminologies and data repositories are examples. Smith B, Kusnierczyk W, Schober D, Ceusters W. Towards a Reference Terminology for Ontology Research and Development in the Biomedical Domain. Proceedings of KR-MED 2006, November 8, 2006, Baltimore MD, USA

  8. B RU1B1 RU1O1 O #1 R Three levels of reality • Both RU1B1 and RU1O1 are representational units referring to #1; • RU1O1 is NOT a representation of RU1B1; • RU1O1 is created through concretization of RU1B1 in some medium.

  9. Faithfulness through the right philosophy • Granular Partition Theory

  10. 2. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) • An ontology which is • Realist: • Fallibilist: • Perspectivalist: • Adequatist: • There is only one reality and its constituents exist independently of our (linguistic, conceptual, theoretical, cultural) representations thereof, • theories and classifications can be subject to revision, • there exists a plurality of alternative, equally legitimate perspectives on that one reality these alternative views are not reducible to any single basic view.

  11. Get down that wall Basic Formal Ontology: teaches us how to build an adequate grid. Granular Partition Theory: relates the copy to reality.

  12. The BFO view of the world • The world consists of • entities that are • Either particulars or universals; • Either occurrents or continuants; • Either dependent or independent; and, • relationships between these entities of the form • <particular , universal> e.g. is-instance-of, • <particular , particular> e.g. is-part-of • <universal , universal> e.g. isa (is-subtype-of)

  13. universals Ontology air plane philosopher airport president instance of… Enola Gay Barry Smith JFK George Bush particulars Inventory Particulars versus Universals

  14. t meeting flying occurrents has-participant at time … Enola Gay Barry Smith JFK George Bush Continuants versus Occurents continuants

  15. Instantiation for continuants universals child adult philosopher president t Barry Smith Instance-of at t George Bush Continuant particulars

  16. Transformation-of Is-a Continuants undergo changes while keeping identity child adult president t Instance-at t Barry Smith George Bush particulars

  17. General principle about relationships All universal level relationships are defined on the basis of particular level relationships Smith B, Ceusters W, Klagges B, Koehler J, Kumar A, Lomax J, Mungall C, Neuhaus F, Rector A, Rosse C. Relations in biomedical ontologies, Genome Biology 2005, 6:R46.

  18. Is_a is defined over instance-of For continuants • C is_a C1 = [definition] for allc, t, if c instance_of C at t then c instance_of C1 at t. For occurrents • P is_a P1 = [definition] for allp, if p instance_of P then p instance_of P1.

  19. Primitive instance-level relationships (RO) • c part_of c1 at t- a primitive relation between two continuant instances and a time at which the one is part of the other • p part_of p1, r part_of r1 - a primitive relation of parthood, holding independently of time, either between process instances (one a subprocess of the other), or between spatial regions (one a subregion of the other) • c located_in r at t- a primitive relation between a continuant instance, a spatial region which it occupies, and a time • r adjacent_to r1 - a primitive relation of proximity between two disjoint continuants • t earlier t1 - a primitive relation between two times • c derives_from c1 - a primitive relation involving two distinct material continuants c and c1 • p has_participant c at t- a primitive relation between a process, a continuant, and a time • p has_agent c at t- a primitive relation between a process, a continuant and a time at which the continuant is causally active in the process Smith B, Ceusters W, Klagges B, Koehler J, Kumar A, Lomax J, Mungall C, Neuhaus F, Rector A, Rosse C. Relations in biomedical ontologies, Genome Biology 2005, 6:R46.

  20. Ontology Instance-of What is specific Referent Tracking A division of labor What is generic

  21. Referent Tracking System

  22. Referent Tracking System Components • Referent Tracking Software Manipulation of statements about facts and beliefs • Referent Tracking Datastore: • IUI repository A collection of globally unique singular identifiers denoting particulars • Referent Tracking Database A collection of facts and beliefs about the particulars denoted in the IUI repository Manzoor S, Ceusters W, Rudnicki R. Implementation of a Referent Tracking System. International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics 2007;2(4):41-58.

  23. Requirements for a digital copy of the world • R1: A faithful representation of reality • R2 … of everything that is digitally registered, what is generic scientific theories what is specific what individual entities exist and how they relate • R3: … throughout reality’s entire history, • R4 … which is computable in order to … … allow queries over the world’s past and present, … make predictions, … fill in gaps, … identify mistakes, ...

  24. The reality: a digital copy of part of the world Applying the grid does not give a distorted representation of reality, but only an incomplete representation !!!

  25. Key issue: keeping track of what the bits denote

  26. Key issue: keeping track of what the bits denote • Images are no good: • Are too complex particulars in their own right that stand in another sort of relation to the part of reality that they depict. • Terms / names ? Middle-East Madagascar Katrina

  27. Names are inadequate representational units • “JFK” “Enola Gay” • “Barry Smith” “George Bush”

  28. denotes denotes denotes Relationship managed in the RTS IUI: Instance Unique Identifiers 5241 89023 109427

  29. The IUI-repository • 17821 denotes Earth • 200896 Madagascar • 70567 Antananarivo • 9576 Hotel Sunny • 509579 the valiha-performance on August 7, 2006 in Hotel Sunny in Antananarivo • …

  30. Key mechanism: IUI assignment • = an act carried out by the first ‘cognitive agent’ feeling the need to acknowledge the existence of a particular it has information about by labellingit with a universally unique singular identifier. • ‘cognitive agent’: • A person; • An organisation; • A device or software agent, e.g. • Bank note printer, • Image analysis software.

  31. Criteria for IUI assignment (1) • The particular’s existence must be determined: • Easy for persons in front of you, tools, ... • Easy for ‘planned acts’: they do not exist before the plan is executed ! • Only the plan exists and possibly the statements made about the future execution of the plan • More difficult: a subject’s intensions, emotions • But the statements observers make about them do exist ! • However: • no need to know what the particular exactly is, i.e. which universal it instantiates • No need to be able to point to it precisely • A member of a specific organization • But: this is not a matter of choice, not ‘any’ out of ...

  32. Criteria for IUI assignment (2) • The particular’s existence ‘may not already have been determined as the existence of something else’: • Morning star and evening star / Himalaya •  2 observers not knowing they observed the same thing • May not have already been assigned a IUI. • It must be relevant to do so: • Personal decision, (scientific) community guideline, ... • Possibilities offered by the annotation system • If a IUI has been assigned by somebody, everybody else making statements about the particular should use it

  33. Particulars of interest for Intelligence • Persons • Credit cards • Places • Cell phones • Organizations • Events • RFID tags • Vehicles • Sensors • Social networks • … • Beliefs • Opinions • Decisions • Plans • Hypotheses • Plots • Intentions • Predictions • Wishes • Interpretations • Diagnoses • ... • Images • Sensor data • Reports • Phone calls • Messages • …

  34. Assertion of assignments • IUI assignment is an act of which the execution has to be asserted in the IUI-repository: • <da, Ai, td> • da IUI of the registering agent • Ai the assertion of the assignment <pa, pp, tap> • pa IUI of the author of the assertion • pp IUI of the particular • tap time of the assignment • td time of registering Ai in the IUI-repository • Neither td or tap give any information about when #pp started to exist ! That might be asserted in statements providing information about #pp .

  35. Relationships between particulars taken from a realism-based relation ontology Instantiation of a universal Annotation using terms from a non-realist terminology ‘Negative findings’ such as absences, missing parts, preventions, … Names for a particular Elementary RTS tuple types

  36. Without ‘names’: pseudonymized database !

  37. Management of the Data Store • Adequate safety and security provisions • Access authorisation, control, read/write, ... • Pseudonymisation • Deletionless but facilities for correcting mistakes. • Registration of assertion ASAP after IUI assignment • (virtual, e.g. LSID) central management with adequate search facilities.

  38. Dealing with mistakes • This change involves RTS entries becoming assigned IUIs of their own which in the restructured D-template is symbolized by IUITi. • Di = <IUId, IUITi, t, E, C, S>. • IUId: the IUI of the entity annotating IUITi by means of the Di entry, • E: either the symbol ‘I’ (for insertion) or any of the error type symbols, • C: a symbol for the applicable reason for change • t: the time the tuple denoted by IUITi is inserted or ‘retired’, • S: a list of IUIs denoting the tuples, if any, that replace the retired one.

  39. Requirements for a digital copy of the world • R1: A faithful representation of reality • R2 … of everything that is digitally registered, what is generic scientific theories what is specific what individual entities exist and how they relate • R3: … throughout reality’s entire history, • R4 … which is computable in order to … … allow queries over the world’s past and present, … make predictions, … fill in gaps, … identify mistakes, ...

  40. Eternal memory

  41. Accept that everything may change: • changes in the underlying reality: • Particulars come, change and go • changes in our (scientific) understanding: • The plant Vulcan does not exist • reassessments of what is considered to be relevant for inclusion (notion of purpose). • encoding mistakes introduced during data entry or ontology development.

  42. t U1 U2 Reality p3 Reality and representation: both in evolution IUI-#3 O-#0 O-#2 Repr. O-#1 = “denotes” = what constitutes the meaning of representational units …. Therefore: O-#0 is meaningless

  43. An “optimal” representational artifact • Each representational unit in such a representational artifact would designate • (1) a single portion of reality (POR), which is • (2) relevant to its purposes and such that • (3) the authors intended to use this representational unit to designate this POR, and • (4) there would be no PORs objectively relevant to these purposes that are not referred to in the representational artifact.

  44. Sources of error • assertion errors: sources may be in error as to what is the case in their target domain; • relevance errors: sources and analysts may be in error as to what is objectively relevant to a given purpose; • encoding errors: they may not successfully encode their underlying cognitive representations, so that particular representational units fail to point to the intended PORs.

  45. Typology of expressions included in and excluded from an ontology in light of relevance and relation to external reality

  46. Typology of expressions included in and excluded from an ontology in light of relevance and relation to external reality Valid presence in the representation Valid absence in the representation

  47. But sometimes you are lucky … Typology of expressions included in and excluded from an ontology in light of relevance and relation to external reality Unjustified presence in the representation Unjustified absence in the representation

  48. Key requirement for updating Any change in an ontology or data repository should be associated with the reason for that change to be able to assess later what kind of mistake has been made ! Ceusters W, Smith B. A Realism-Based Approach to the Evolution of Biomedical Ontologies. Proceedings of AMIA 2006, Washington DC, 2006;:121-125.

  49. Updating is an active process • authors assume in good faith that • all included representational units are of the P+1 type, and • all they are aware of, but not included, of A+1 or A+2. • If they become aware of a mistake, they make a change under the assumption that their changes are also towards the P+1, A+1, or A+2 cases. • Thus at that time, they know of what type the previous entry must of have been under the belief what the current one is, and the reason for the change.

  50. Possible evolutions through updates

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