Luigi Ceccaroni

Publications

• Implementing Agent-based Web Services

  Jonathan Dale, Luigi Ceccaroni, Youyong Zou, Avigail Agam

  06/2003;

  As part of the Agentcities project, we have developed a prototype of an Evening Organiser application which allows users to flexibly and dynamically schedule activities within an itinerary. The Evening Organiser and the Web-accessible restaurant and cinema services which it uses have been developed ... [more] As part of the Agentcities project, we have developed a prototype of an Evening Organiser application which allows users to flexibly and dynamically schedule activities within an itinerary. The Evening Organiser and the Web-accessible restaurant and cinema services which it uses have been developed within a generic service environment and the implementation of this has been built using the April Agent Platform, the DAML+OIL ontology language, the DAML Query Language and the Java Theorem Prover. This service environment is populated with agents of different natures, such as service instances and service finders. Service instances represent individual business entities, such as restaurants and cinemas. Service finders represent aggregated views over service instances, such as Yahoo!-hosted restaurants or Citysearch-hosted cinemas. The details of the implementation of these Web Services are described through the use of a motivating scenario.

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• OntoWEDSS: augmenting environmental decision-support systems with ontologies

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Ulises Cort Es, Miquel S Anchez-marr E

  03/2003;

  This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research on AI techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architecture's design of OntoWEDSS, a decision support system for wastewater management, is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and case... [more] This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research on AI techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architecture's design of OntoWEDSS, a decision support system for wastewater management, is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and case-based reasoning with a domain ontology. The integration of the newly created WaWO ontology provides a more flexible management capability to OntoWEDSS. The construction of the decision support system is based on a specific case study but the system is also of general interest, given that its ontology-underpinned architecture can be applied to any wastewater treatment plant and, at an appropriate level of abstraction, to other environmental domains. The OntoWEDSS system helps improve the diagnosis of faulty states of a treatment plant, it provides support for complex problem-solving, and it facilitates knowledge modeling and reuse. In particular, the following issues are dealt with: (1) the improvement of the modeling of information about wastewater treatment processes and the clarification of a part of the existing terminological confusion in the domain, (2) the incorporation of ontology-modeled microbiologic knowledge related to the treatment process into the reasoning process and (3) the creation of a decision support system with three layers (perception, diagnosis and decision support) which combines knowledge through a novel integration between KBSs and ontologies, thus providing better results.

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• Experiences in Modeling Agentcities Utility-Ontologies with a Collaborative Approach

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Myriam Ribiere

  03/2003;

  This paper presents experiences about modeling and implementation of ontologies to be used within the Agentcities initiative. A practical case of collaborative ontology-building among very different partners from industry is described. The application domain of the ontologies is an open, dynamic age... [more] This paper presents experiences about modeling and implementation of ontologies to be used within the Agentcities initiative. A practical case of collaborative ontology-building among very different partners from industry is described. The application domain of the ontologies is an open, dynamic agent test-bed and they are explicitly designed to be shared by most services created within this environment. The ontological models are implemented in the DAML+OIL knowledge-representation language and are described in limited details. The full version of the ontologies will be available on the Agentcities Web site.

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• OntoWEDSS: an ontology-underpinned decision-support system for wastewater management

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Ulises Cort Es

  03/2003;

  This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research on artificial intelligence techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architecture's design of OntoWEDSS, a decision support system for wastewater management, is presented. This system augments classic rule-bas... [more] This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research on artificial intelligence techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architecture's design of OntoWEDSS, a decision support system for wastewater management, is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and casebased reasoning with a domain ontology. The integration of the newly created WaWO ontology provides a more flexible management capability to OntoWEDSS. The construction of the decision support system is based on a specific case study but the system is also of general interest, given that its ontology-underpinned architecture can be applied to any wastewater treatment plant and, at an appropriate level of abstraction, to other environmental domains. The OntoWEDSS system helps improve the diagnosis of faulty states of a treatment plant, it provides support for wastewater-related complex problem-solving, and it facilitates knowledge modeling and reuse by means of the WaWO ontology. In particular, the following issues are dealt with: (1) the improvement of the modeling of information about wastewater treatment processes and the clarification of a part of the existing terminological confusion in the domain, (2) the incorporation of ontology-modeled microbiologic knowledge related to the treatment process into the reasoning process and (3) the creation of a decision support system with three layers (perception, diagnosis and decision support) which combines knowledge through a novel integration between KBSs and ontologies, thus providing better results.

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• Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Decision Support Systems

  U. Cort, Es M. S, E And, L. Ceccaroni

  11/2002;

  An effective protection of our environment is largely dependent on the quality of the available information used to make an appropriate decision. Problems arise when the quantities of available information are huge and nonuniform (i.e., coming from many different disciplines or sources) and their qu... [more] An effective protection of our environment is largely dependent on the quality of the available information used to make an appropriate decision. Problems arise when the quantities of available information are huge and nonuniform (i.e., coming from many different disciplines or sources) and their quality could not be stated in advance. Another associated issue is the dynamical nature of the problem. Computers are central in contemporary environmental protection in tasks such as monitoring, data analysis, communication, information storage and retrieval, so it has been natural to try to integrate and enhance all these tasks with Artificial Intelligence knowledge-based techniques. This paper presents an overview of the impact of Artificial Intelligence techniques on the definition and development of Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) during the last fifteen years. The review highlights the desirable features that an EDSS must show. The paper concludes with a selection of successful applications to a wide range of environmental problems.

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• Semi-Automatic Learning With Quantitative and Qualitative Features

  Joaquim Comas, Ignasi R. Roda, Luigi Ceccaroni, Miquel Sfinchez-marrb

  07/2002;

  Part of artificial-intelligence research is highly concerned with the efficient manipulation of environmental databases. Nowadays there exist several knowledge-based systems, with specialized problem-solving expertise in a large number of areas. And, in order to function, they usually need a leaming... [more] Part of artificial-intelligence research is highly concerned with the efficient manipulation of environmental databases. Nowadays there exist several knowledge-based systems, with specialized problem-solving expertise in a large number of areas. And, in order to function, they usually need a leaming module for preliminary knowledge extraction, characterization of the particular subject area, obtaining hints about the problems within that subject area and getting clues about the possible solutions of those problems. In this paper a hybrid leaming system for the wastewater treatment process is described, which includes the participation of human process-experts interacting with two clustering techniques applied to measured descriptors. As a case study, a data set from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was chosen, including 65 quantitative and qualitative features. In the case study, the obtained classes reflect the dynamics of the involved environmental system and are used to identify the state of the WWTP. The final aim is comparing the conclusions obtained from the analysis of only quantitative data with the conclusions achieved after the addition to the analysis of qualitative data and results of microscopic observation.

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• Modeling Utility Ontologies in Agentcities with a

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Myriam Ribiere

  07/2002;

  This paper presents experiences about the modeling and implementation of utility ontologies used within the Agentcities initiative. Utility ontologies include domain-independent concepts which most services developed within the project use. Ontology building was carried out collaboratively among ver... [more] This paper presents experiences about the modeling and implementation of utility ontologies used within the Agentcities initiative. Utility ontologies include domain-independent concepts which most services developed within the project use. Ontology building was carried out collaboratively among very different partners from industry and academia. The application domain of the ontologies is an open, dynamic test-bed for agent deployment and they are explicitly designed to be shared by most services created within this environment. The ontologies are implemented in the DAML+OIL knowledge-representation language and a summary is given of the tools which currently let the user manage this language at a high level.

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• Pizza and a Movie: A Case Study in Advanced Web Services

  Jonathan Dale, Luigi Ceccaroni

  06/2002;

  This paper presents the potential of Advanced Web Services through a simple case study, which is part of a larger service that will be available in the Agentcities Network. The case study corresponds to a service in the domain of entertainment arrangements. A detailed instantiation of the whole serv... [more] This paper presents the potential of Advanced Web Services through a simple case study, which is part of a larger service that will be available in the Agentcities Network. The case study corresponds to a service in the domain of entertainment arrangements. A detailed instantiation of the whole service execution and the DAML-S model at the top level are described.

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• ONTOWEDSS- An Ontology-based Environmental Decision Support System for the Management of Wastewater Treatment Plants

  Luigi Ceccaroni

  03/2002;

  The contributions of this thesis bridge two disciplines: environmental science (specifically, wastewater management) and computer science (specifically, artificial intelligence). Wastewater management as a discipline operates using a range of different approaches and methods which include: manual co... [more] The contributions of this thesis bridge two disciplines: environmental science (specifically, wastewater management) and computer science (specifically, artificial intelligence). Wastewater management as a discipline operates using a range of different approaches and methods which include: manual control, on-line automatic control, numerical or non-numerical models, statistical models and simulation models. The thesis characterizes an interdisciplinary research on artificial intelligence techniques (rule-based reasoning, case-based reasoning, ontologies and planning) applied to environmental decision-support systems. The integrated architecture's design of this application, the OntoWEDSS system, augments classic reasoning systems (rule-based reasoning and case-based reasoning) with a domain ontology about the management of wastewater treatment plants. The integration of the newly created WaWO ontology provides a more flexible management capability to OntoWEDSS. The construction of the OntoWEDSS decision support system is based on a specific case study but the system is also of general interest, given that its ontologyunderpinned architecture can be applied to any wastewater treatment plant and, at an appropriate level of abstraction, to other environmental domains. The OntoWEDSS system improves the diagnosis of the state of a treatment plant, provides support for wastewater-related complex problem-solving, and facilitates knowledge modelling and reuse by means of the WaWO ontology.

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• What If a Wastewater Treatment Plant Were a Town of Agents

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Campus Nord, M Odul C, Jordi Girona

  09/2001;

  We present a potential application of a multiagent infrastructure to the domain of wastewater treatment. In this domain, each task represents an effort that contributes to the process, but the whole process and the tasks belong to separate conceptual-layers. We employ several agents, who make use of... [more] We present a potential application of a multiagent infrastructure to the domain of wastewater treatment. In this domain, each task represents an effort that contributes to the process, but the whole process and the tasks belong to separate conceptual-layers. We employ several agents, who make use of case-based reasoning, rule-based reasoning and reactive planning, and who decouple between interaction syntax and local knowledge. The discussion about their behavior leads us to take into consideration the following issues: the dynamic modification of agents' acting, and the communication based on a domain ontology, whose content varies in time. The ontology which we employ provides a set of concepts that can be queried, advertised and used to control agent cooperation. It is also the basis of the definition and the exchange of the semantics of the domain model.

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• WaWO - An ontology embedded into an environmental decision-support system for wastewater treatment plant management

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Ulises Cort Es, Miquel S Anchez-marr

  08/2001;

  We present an ontology (named WaWO - Waste Water Ontology) applied to the domain of wastewater treatment processes. WaWO is built following the ideas of Uschold and Gruninger [14] [13] and is a hierarchically structured set of terms and a set of axioms for describing the real-world domain of wastewa... [more] We present an ontology (named WaWO - Waste Water Ontology) applied to the domain of wastewater treatment processes. WaWO is built following the ideas of Uschold and Gruninger [14] [13] and is a hierarchically structured set of terms and a set of axioms for describing the real-world domain of wastewater treatment. WaWO is the manifestation of a shared understanding of the wastewater domain that is agreed among a number of agents: mainly, experts in environmental and chemical engineering. The WaWO ontology will be integrated into an existent environmental decision-support system (named DAI-DEPUR ). In the paper we describe the process of building the ontology, the intended uses of the ontology and what we want to obtain by its application.

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• Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Decision Support Systems.

  Ulises Cortés, Miquel Sànchez-Marrè, Luigi Ceccaroni, Ignasi R.-Roda, Manel Poch

  Appl. Intell. 01/2000; 13:77-91.

• SOPAT: Servicio de orientación personalizada y accesible para turismo

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Victor Codina Busquets

  Procesamiento del lenguaje natural, ISSN 1135-5948, Nº. 41, 2008, pags. 313-314.

  The lack of automatic, personalized services of information, which were easily accessible to tourists and citizens when they are in public spaces, negatively impacts the tourism sector, since it reduces the use of the services offered by the city and the satisfaction degree of the users. The SOPAT p... [more] The lack of automatic, personalized services of information, which were easily accessible to tourists and citizens when they are in public spaces, negatively impacts the tourism sector, since it reduces the use of the services offered by the city and the satisfaction degree of the users. The SOPAT project has developed a personalized service of information and city guide that facilitates all kinds of tourists and citizens access to information of interest using an interactive community display as experimental platform. La falta de servicios automáticos y personalizados de información fácilmente accesibles para los turistas y ciudadanos cuándo éstos se encuentran en la vía pública, impacta negativamente en el sector turístico, ya que implica una disminución del uso de los servicios que ofrece la ciudad y del grado de satisfacción de los usuarios. El proyecto SOPAT ha desarrollado un servicio personalizado de información y guía de ciudad que facilita el acceso a la información de interés a todo tipo de turistas y ciudadanos utilizando como plataforma experimental un punto de información multimedia con servicios interactivos en la zona pública.

• OntoWEDSS: augmenting environmental decision-support systems with ontologies

  Luigi Ceccaroni, Ulises Cortés, Miquel Sànchez-Marrè

  Environmental Modelling & Software.

  This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research effort on AI techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architectural design of the OntoWEDSS decision-support system for wastewater management is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and ca... [more] This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research effort on AI techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architectural design of the OntoWEDSS decision-support system for wastewater management is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and case-based reasoning with a domain ontology, which provides a more flexible management capability to OntoWEDSS. The construction of the decision-support system is based on a specific case study. But the system is also of general interest, given that its ontology-underpinned architecture can be applied to any wastewater treatment plant and, at an appropriate level of abstraction, to other environmental domains. The OntoWEDSS system helps improve the diagnosis of faulty states of a treatment plant, provides support for complex problem-solving and facilitates knowledge modeling and reuse. In particular, the following issues are dealt with: (1) modeling information about wastewater treatment processes, (2) clarifying part of the existing terminological confusion in the domain, (3) incorporating ontology-modeled microbiologic knowledge related to the treatment process into the reasoning process and (4) creating a decision-support system that combines information through a novel integration between knowledge-based systems and ontologies.