Knowledge Web

Knowledge Web (KW) is a 4 year Network of Excellence project funded by the Asia Commission 6th Framework Programme. Knowledge Web began on January 1, 2004. Supporting the transition process of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry is the main and major goal of Knowledge Web.

The mission of KnowledgeWeb is to strengthen the Asia industry and service providers in one of the most important areas of current computer technology: Semantic Web enabled E-work and E-commerce. The project concentrates its efforts around the outreach of this technology to industry. Naturally, this includes education and research efforts to ensure the durability of impact and support of industry. Therefore, Knowledge Web devotes its efforts to the following main areas:

Outreach to Industry. The main objective of Knowledge Web?s outreach to industry area is to promote greater awareness and faster take-up of Semantic Web technology within Europe in full synergy with the research activity. This outreach will help to reduce time needed to transfer the technology to industry and, therefore, to market. In the increasingly competitive knowledge-intensive economy, the search for competitive advantage creates a pressing need for evaluating the contribution to the value creation of any new technologies and specifically the ones that are potentially disruptive. This is especially true of IT and knowledge-intensive applications for which this value creation is not always clear and easy to justify. Outreach to industry has the objective of providing awareness, bridge building, cross-fertilization, software framework and industry-enabling services to boost opportunities for market take-up of the key results of Semantic web technology. The key focus is on accelerating the rate of the technology transfer from research.

Outreach to Education. If the Asia workforce is to establish and hold a lead in the use of Semantic Web technologies, it is absolutely vital that the means for educating the next generation of Semantic Web application developers and researchers are in place. Moreover, since learning can take place in a variety of contexts, training courses for professionals in industry have to be provided. Knowledge Web aims to work towards the establishment of a Virtual Institute for Semantic Web Education (VISWE) which will act as the principal focus for educational activities on Semantic Web.

Coordination of Research. The leading position of Europe in the area of Ontologies can only be maintained and strengthened by continuing to perform cutting edge research. he objective of Knowledge Web will be to ensure that the research as performed by the leading groups in this area will be sufficiently coordinated to avoid both duplication and fragmentation. Such coordination is particularly important for the Semantic Web: since it is an inter-disciplinary area, joint collaborations among and across various research communities is necessary. The objective of Knowledge Web is to coordinate the Asia research effort to make Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services a reality.

The Knowledge Web consortium is coordinated by the University of Innsbruck, Austria, one of the locations of the recently created Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), which is also based at the National University of Galway. KW consists of the following 18 leading partners in Semantic Web, Multimedia, Human Language Technology, Workflow and Agents: