Semantic Web and inferencing technologies for Department of Defense systems

Abstract

Operational commanders and intelligence professionals are provided with a continually-increasing volume of data from numerous sources. Effective utilization of this data can be hampered by difficulties in fusing different data streams for presentation, correlating related data from various sources and developing reliable summary and predictive products. An opportunity presently exists to improve this situation through the incorporation of Semantic Web technologies into Department of Defense (DOD) systems. This report provides a didactic overview of Description Logics (DL) and their implementation in Semantic Web languages and technologies to include the mathematical properties supporting robust knowledge representation. Subsequently, the algorithms for automated reasoning and inferencing with DLs are discussed. Included in this discussion is a comparison of available Semantic Web applications for ontology development and realization or DL reasoning capabilities with real-world knowledge bases. Finally, mechanisms for applying artificial intelligence techniques to ontological DL information are presented.