Research in Multi-Organizational Processes and

Enabling Infocosm Theme. The merging of computers and communications with significant advances in networking infrastructure has made millions of information sources with wide varieties of information accessible. This capability gives us a vision of an information rich society "infocosm", where we expect to have any information any where we want in (m)any form(s) for effective decision making and knowledge-centric activities, improved productivity, and fun. Emphasis of our research is on semantics (meaning and use) of information and semantic interoperability supported by an information brokering architecture. This is closely tied to the recent interest in Semantic Web, which is presented as “the Web of data (and connections) with meaning in the sense that a computer program can learn enough about what the data means to process it (Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999). Our emphasis is on organizing and utilizing Web-based as well as enterprise content semantically, rather than though syntactic and structural methods.