Methods for Ontology-Driven Integration

This paper describes the motivations, approach, and architecture for using ontologies in knowledge extraction and in applications that assist situated agents in complex information integration tasks. Our approach applies ontologies along with semantic analysis methods to extract task relevant knowledge from distributed, unstructured text sources. This knowledge is then applied to assist in information integration, sharing, and situation-awareness applications. We have developed a software architecture that provides support for automated ontology extraction, ontology conflict analysis and mapping, and knowledge integration and sharing. We are currently designing and building multiple applications that validate the practical benefits of this