This unique book succinctly summarizes the need to measure how ontologies (one of the building blocks of the Semantic Web) are currently being utilized, providing insights for various stakeholders. Where possible it improves and reuses terms in existing vocabularies/ontologies, as recommended by the Linked Data community. Recent advances in the Semantic Web have led to a proliferation of Resource Description Framework (RDF) data, which employ ontologies to semantically describe the information on the Web making it equally understandable for both humans and machines. However, to create a network effect, it is important that selective ontologies are used by more data publishers to improve the value of that ontology. For this to happen, it is vital to discover what is being used from an ontology to semantically annotate the information on the Web specific to a given domain. Answers to such basic but crucial questions can only be achieved by ascertaining how ontologies in the current semantic web are being utilized and adopted. The proposed frameworks to obtain such insights are explained with real-world examples to provide a clear and detailed description of ontology usage analysis. Both theoretical and practical, the book is of value to academics and professionals working in industry. Specifically, it is of primary interest to researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the area of the Semantic Web and its various real-world applications.

This unique book succinctly summarizes the need to measure how ontologies (one of the building blocks of the Semantic Web) are currently being utilized, providing insights for various stakeholders. Where possible it improves and reuses terms in existing vocabularies/ontologies, as recommended by the Linked Data community. Recent advances in the Semantic Web have led to a proliferation of Resource Description Framework (RDF) data, which employ ontologies to semantically describe the information on the Web making it equally understandable for both humans and machines. However, to create a network effect, it is important that selective ontologies are used by more data publishers to improve the value of that ontology. For this to happen, it is vital to discover what is being used from an ontology to semantically annotate the information on the Web specific to a given domain. Answers to such basic but crucial questions can only be achieved by ascertaining how ontologies in the current semantic web are being utilized and adopted. The proposed frameworks to obtain such insights are explained with real-world examples to provide a clear and detailed description of ontology usage analysis. Both theoretical and practical, the book is of value to academics and professionals working in industry. Specifically, it is of primary interest to researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the area of the Semantic Web and its various real-world applications.

Recent years have seen the development of two significant trends namely: the adoption of some Traditional Chinese Medicine Practices into mainstream Allopathic Western Medicine and the advent of the internet and broad band networks leading to an increased interest in the use of Telemedicine to deliver medical services. In this book, we see the convergence of these two trends leading to a semantically-based TCM Telemedicine system that utilizes an ontology to provide sharable knowledge in the TCM realm to achieve this. The underpinning research required the development of a three-layer architecture and an Ontology of the TCM knowledge. As TCM knowledge like all medical knowledge is not frozen in time it was important to develop an approach that would allow evolution of the Ontology when new evidence became available. In order for the system to be practically grounded it was important to work with an industry partner PuraPharm Group/HerbMiners Informatics Limited. This partnership was initiated through Professor Allan Wong and the Chairman of PuraPharm Group Mr. Abraham Chan. This led to the system being utilized in more than 20 Mobile Clinics in Hong Kong and 300 Hospitals in China. In order for these different deployments of the system to be coherent with the main core Ontology, it was necessary for us to develop an Ontology Driven Software System Generation approach.

Recent years have seen the development of two significant trends namely: the adoption of some Traditional Chinese Medicine Practices into mainstream Allopathic Western Medicine and the advent of the internet and broad band networks leading to an increased interest in the use of Telemedicine to deliver medical services. In this book, we see the convergence of these two trends leading to a semantically-based TCM Telemedicine system that utilizes an ontology to provide sharable knowledge in the TCM realm to achieve this. The underpinning research required the development of a three-layer architecture and an Ontology of the TCM knowledge. As TCM knowledge like all medical knowledge is not frozen in time it was important to develop an approach that would allow evolution of the Ontology when new evidence became available. In order for the system to be practically grounded it was important to work with an industry partner PuraPharm Group/HerbMiners Informatics Limited. This partnership was initiated through Professor Allan Wong and the Chairman of PuraPharm Group Mr. Abraham Chan. This led to the system being utilized in more than 20 Mobile Clinics in Hong Kong and 300 Hospitals in China. In order for these different deployments of the system to be coherent with the main core Ontology, it was necessary for us to develop an Ontology Driven Software System Generation approach.

During the last two decades, the idea of Semantic Web has received a great deal of attention. An extensive body of knowledge has emerged to describe technologies that seek to help us create and use aspects of the Semantic Web. Ontology and agent-based technologies are understood to be the two important technologies here. A large number of articles and a number of books exist to describe the use individually of the two technologies and the design of systems that use each of these technologies individually, but little focus has been given on how one can - sign systems that carryout integrated use of the two different technologies. In this book we describe ontology and agent-based systems individually, and highlight advantages of integration of the two different and complementary te- nologies. We also present a methodology that will guide us in the design of the - tegrated ontology-based multi-agent systems and illustrate this methodology on two use cases from the health and software engineering domain. This book is organized as follows: * Chapter I, Current issues and the need for ontologies and agents, describes existing problems associated with uncontrollable information overload and explains how ontologies and agent-based systems can help address these - sues. * Chapter II, Introduction to multi-agent systems, defines agents and their main characteristics and features including mobility, communications and collaboration between different agents. It also presents different types of agents on the basis of classifications done by different authors.

Risk and reward are always foremost in the determination of investment decisions and business transactions. Advances in the area of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have enabled the development of new business paradigms. Such paradigms involve transactions taking place between loosely connected parties, often totally or partially unknown to one another. One important concept required to ensure such transactions are successful is transactional risk. The importance of doing this has been demonstrated in recent financial crisis. This book is unique in simultaneously taking into account the likelihood of an event occurring and its financial impact and provides an integrated discussion of the process of transactional risk identification, assessment, evaluation, management and recording in these emerging domains. It provides a detailed and clear exposition of the importance of transactional risk before detailing for its assessment and evaluation. The scope of the book is theoretical and practical and as such it will have a broad market both within academia and industry. Specifically this book should be of primary interest to researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the area of developing business intelligence techniques and their application in various real world applications.

Risk and reward are always foremost in the determination of investment decisions and business transactions. Advances in the area of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have enabled the development of new business paradigms. Such paradigms involve transactions taking place between loosely connected parties, often totally or partially unknown to one another. One important concept required to ensure such transactions are successful is transactional risk. The importance of doing this has been demonstrated in recent financial crisis. This book is unique in simultaneously taking into account the likelihood of an event occurring and its financial impact and provides an integrated discussion of the process of transactional risk identification, assessment, evaluation, management and recording in these emerging domains. It provides a detailed and clear exposition of the importance of transactional risk before detailing for its assessment and evaluation. The scope of the book is theoretical and practical and as such it will have a broad market both within academia and industry. Specifically this book should be of primary interest to researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the area of developing business intelligence techniques and their application in various real world applications.

During the last two decades, the idea of Semantic Web has received a great deal of attention. An extensive body of knowledge has emerged to describe technologies that seek to help us create and use aspects of the Semantic Web. Ontology and agent-based technologies are understood to be the two important technologies here. A large number of articles and a number of books exist to describe the use individually of the two technologies and the design of systems that use each of these technologies individually, but little focus has been given on how one can - sign systems that carryout integrated use of the two different technologies. In this book we describe ontology and agent-based systems individually, and highlight advantages of integration of the two different and complementary te- nologies. We also present a methodology that will guide us in the design of the - tegrated ontology-based multi-agent systems and illustrate this methodology on two use cases from the health and software engineering domain. This book is organized as follows: * Chapter I, Current issues and the need for ontologies and agents, describes existing problems associated with uncontrollable information overload and explains how ontologies and agent-based systems can help address these - sues. * Chapter II, Introduction to multi-agent systems, defines agents and their main characteristics and features including mobility, communications and collaboration between different agents. It also presents different types of agents on the basis of classifications done by different authors.

The all pervasive web is influencing all aspects of human endeavour. In order to strengthen the description of web resources, so that they are more meaningful to both humans and machines, web semantics have been proposed. These allow better annotation, understanding, search, interpretation and composition of these - sources. The growing importance of these has brought about a great increase in research into these issues. We propose a series of books that will address key issues in web semantics on an annual basis. This book series can be considered as an extended journal published annually. The series will combine theoretical results, standards, and their realizations in applications and implementations. The series is titled "Advances in Web Sem- tics" and will be published periodically by Springer to promote emerging Semantic Web technologies. It will contain the cream of the collective contribution of the Int- national Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Web Semantics Working Group; WG 2. 12 & WG 12. 4. This book, addressing the current state of the art, is the first in the series. In subsequent years, books will address a particular theme, topic or issue where the greatest advances are being made. Examples of such topics include: (i) process semantics, (ii) web services, (iii) ontologies, (iv) workflows, (v) trust and reputation, (vi) web applications, etc. Periodically, perhaps every five years, there will be a scene-setting state of the art volume.