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UB center sponsors ontology conference
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
The philosophical field of ontology could be said to pose a single question: "What is there?"
It is a question that when asked with reference to a particular item or concept, can produce a wide range of answers, even within a single field. When conceptualizations and definitions are not shared by individuals looking at the same data, the result can be flawed assumptions, confusion, communication breakdown and an inaccurate outcome.
Within a particular framework, ontologists describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence, and use these to define entities and types of entities within the framework—entities and types that can be agreed upon and shared.
In fields of security and intelligence, applied ontological research is being used to develop approaches to the analysis of intelligence that will enable greater flexibility, precision, timeliness and automation of analysis, which will maximize valuable human resources in responding to fast-evolving threats.
Today and tomorrow, the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR) at UB will sponsor "Ontology for the Intelligence Community," a workshop to be held in Columbia, Md.
The workshop, organized by internationally recognized ontologist Barry Smith, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the UB Department of Philosophy and director of NCOR, will bring together scholars and intelligence analysts from major agencies, universities and other bodies involved in intelligence activities throughout the world to discuss new approaches to data analysis in the intelligence field.
Attendees will include intelligence analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Administration, the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Senate Intelligence Committee Technical Advisory Board and other agencies involved in intelligence activities throughout the world.
"The increasing volume, variety and velocity of intelligence analysis in the post-9/11 world makes it essential that data be assessed accurately and quickly, regardless of its type or source," Smith says.
"Recent years have seen a steep rise in the use of ontology-based technology in developing intelligence information processing applications, but the news from the ontology front is not all positive.
"Even among those promoting ontology-based technology, there is little shared understanding of the potential applications for high-quality ontologies or how they can be used to support the exchange and integration of data," Smith says.
"It is here that philosophers can help."
Smith points out that ontology has been successfully applied in such areas as bioinformatics, and claims the time is ripe to take this new form of applied philosophy seriously in other spheres as well.
The workshop will bring together specialists in applied ontology and members of the intelligence community for interactive sessions covering foundational issues and key application domains for which ontology-based technology is particularly suited.
Experts on ontology-based technology, particularly those with experience in the problems facing the intelligence community, will report on the successes and challenges of the application of ontology in deployed applications.
With more than a dozen researchers addressing different aspects of ontology in their work, UB is a world center of ontological research, and three Buffalo experts, all of whom play an active role in NCOR's work, will be featured speakers at this event.
Besides Smith, they are Werner Ceusters, director of the Ontology Research Group in UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, and Eric Little, a graduate of the UB Department of Philosophy who now directs the Center for Ontology and Interdisciplinary Studies at D'Youville College.
In addition to the UB speakers, presentations will be delivered by several other experts in the field, including Maureen A. Baginski, president of Sparta Inc.'s National Security Systems Sector. She is the former executive assistant director for intelligence at the FBI and director of the Operations Center of the NSA.
She will be joined by Kevin S. Lynch, an ontologist at the CIA and primary author of the semantic technology strategy for the CIA, and by Leo Orbst, principal artificial intelligence scientist at MITRE's Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, where he leads the Information Semantics Group.
Another speaker, J. C. SMART, is the technical director of the National Security Operations Center (NSOC) and a former scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he was the founder and director of the Information Operations Warfare and Assurance Center (IOWA).
Complete program details are available at the NCOR Web site at http://ncor.us/.