1 ONTOCINC Server : A Web-based Environment for Collaborative Construction of Ontologies

Coalition operations will become more and more important in the future. Interactions between coalition participants require mechanisms to facilitate the exchange of information. In this context, it is necessary to address interoperability issues so that coalition information can be effectively shared and exploited. In our research, we consider ontologies as a key component to provide a shared understanding of a domain and facilitate knowledge level interoperability among heterogeneous information sources. In this paper, we describe the specific requirements of coalition operations for information exchange and the methodology we proposed to the collaborative development of ontologies to satisfy these requirements. Then, we present the ontology engineering web-based environment we designed and implemented, called the OntoCINC Server. Finally, we present the lessons learned in applying the methodology within a coalition initiative. 2. Introduction In the Canadian Forces, worldwide contributions are mainly performed through coalitions. Such operations will become more and more important in the future. Therefore, it will be necessary to provide Commanders with access to timely and relevant information from diverse and heterogeneous information sources for conducting their operations. To deal with this heterogeneity, future command and control information systems will have to address interoperability issues so that coalition information can be effectively shared and exploited. The problem of interoperability between systems is more challenging across organizations with different national doctrines. For example, one problem is that organizations often refer to the same concept using different names. To this end, interactions between coalition participants require mechanisms to facilitate the exchange of information and to provide a shared understanding of the domain based, at least, on a commonly agreed terminology. In this context, we consider ontologies as a key component to provide a shared understanding of a domain and facilitate knowledge level interoperability among heterogeneous information sources [Boury-Brisset, 2001]. An ontology formally defines a common set of terms that are used to describe and represent a domain, or to paraphrase T. Gruber [Gruber, 93], it is a formal explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. The Defence Research & Development – Valcartier (DRDC – Valcartier) participates in a coalition experimental initiative, called C-CINC21 (Coalition Commander in Chief of the 21 Century), which aims to define and conduct a set of multinational coalition command and control related experiments to advance the state of knowledge and to contribute to the interoperability of future coalition operations. Canada is one of the four-eye nations involved in this coalition initiative. Among the proposed activities, we aimed at experimenting with innovative knowledge management concepts and tools as well as to develop ontologies for coalition interoperability. In particular, one of the objectives of the C-CINC21 collaboration initiative is to provide an infrastructure and various services for information management within coalition environments built on top of ontologies, in order to help participants in the coalition to get improved situational awareness. The information services that could be provided include: semantic search and information retrieval among heterogeneous information sources based on shared ontologies, publishing of information, advertising of new publications, etc., as illustrated in Figure 1.