Primary Investigator

Email

Institution

Gauch, Susan E.

sgauch@eecs.ukans.edu

University of Kansas

Abstract
Biological resources are the basis of much of this Nations prosperity. The wise stewardship of these riches affects current and future generations and, therefore, must be rooted in decisions based on the best information available. Because of the rapid growth of all content on the Internet, there is a corresponding increase in online biological information of all types. However, the sheer volume of data, and its widely varying quality and physical distribution make it impossible for decision makers to make critical decisions without the benefit of the existing body of information. This project aims to investigate and develop intelligent knowledge management tools and deploy them in this important domain. In particular, we will investigate the use of a taxonomy as a reference ontology to provide a conceptual framework to allow intelligent agents to browse biodiversity information in a variety of formats widely distributed on the World Wide Web.

Our goals are four fold: 1) to investigate the use of a taxonomy as a reference ontology for browsing biodiverity information; 2) to evaluate techniques to automatically classify biodiversity information (web sites and individual web pages; 3) to personalize the information presented to the users expertise and needs; and 4) lay the groundwork for larger, multidisciplinary, efforts in intelligent search, visualization, and personalization of biodiversity information.

This project proposes to build on existing work currently being done at the University of Kansas related to information discovery, retrieval, and delivery, particularly the OBIWAN project for ontology based search, browsing and visualization of Web resources and the PEET project for preserving and extending biodiversity information. A partnership has already been established between the University of Kansas and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) to capitalize on the knowledge, expertise, and tools that have grown out of the existing University of Kansas NSF research agreement. As a result of this partnership, the first intelligent search agent for biodiversity information, BioBot, has been developed.