A Semantic Wiki for Complex Operations Community
From MilcordWiki
Overview
In this project, we are developing a semantic wiki for the complex operations community. Click on play below to watch a screencast overview.
Need
As codified by the National Defense Authorization Act 2009, a Complex Operation is:
- A stability operation
- A security operation
- A transition and reconstruction operation
- A counterinsurgency operation
- An operation consisting of irregular warfare
Such operations require the collaboration among US DoD components, US Department of State, USAID, Host Nation government, international Non-Governmental Agencies (NGOs). Complex Operations practitioners seek reference, doctrinal, historical and process knowledge from disparate sources and information portals. Limitations of current solutions include document centric knowledge representation that does not support structured browsing, keyword search interfaces not suitable to question answering.
Approach
Our solution is a semantic wiki to model, aggregate and reason about knowledge chunks from
- Doctrine knowledge field manuals like FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, FM 3-07 Stability Operations, and handbooks like the Sphere Handbook
- Reference knowledge from encyclopedic sources such as The World Factbook, Wikipedia
- Facts and relationships relationships from social science theory, models …
- Quantitative knowledge from social science databases such as Global Terrorism Database, Uppsala Conflict Database, Minorities at Risk Project Database, CIRI Human Rights Data Project …
- Current knowledge from authoritative sources like CCO portal, ReliefWeb, STAR-TIDES
Benefits
Regular wikis support text and hyperlink based knowledge capture that enables traditional hypertext navigation and keyword searches. In contrast, a semantic wiki supports knowledge capture as facts and relationships that enables database like queries for knowledge discovery. The advantages of using a semantic wiki approach include:
- Represent expert and model driven facts and relationships
- Automate growth of knowledge using dynamic tables, graphs, charts
- Leverage existing knowledge like DBpedia via Sparql end points
- Extend semantic wiki with GIS support
- Power an answers engine
Applications
Serve as a knowledge repository for the strategy, plan and execution of complex operations to answer:
- What tensions between minorities should I be aware of in a 10 square mile Area of Operations?
- What are the local tribes and sub-tribes? What are their beliefs and how might they affect the desired operation?
- Provide me with an up to date list of stability initiatives over the last 10 years in this region/country - highlight results and issues.
References
- Guttieri, K. "Complex Operations: Research and Education", Consortium for Complex Operations Kickoff Conference, 29 April 2008.
- Stroh, L., Caglayan, A., Burke, D., Eaton, G., and Guttieri, K. (2009) “Knowledge Management Needs of the Complex Operations Community", OSD Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) Modeling Program: Focus 2010, 5-7 August 2009, Chantilly, VA.
- Caglayan, A., Stroh, L., Burke, D., and Eaton, G. (2009) “A Hybrid Knowledge Framework for Complex Operations", OSD Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) Modeling Program: Focus 2010, 5-7 August 2009, Chantilly, VA.
- Burke, D.,, Caglayan, A., Stroh, L., Zhao, Y. T., and Eaton, G. (2009) “An Open Source Social Science Data Repository for HSCB Research ", OSD Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) Modeling Program: Focus 2010, 5-7 August 2009, Chantilly, VA.
