DFKI-LT - Competence Center Semantic Web

CCSW is a virtual research center within DFKI GmbH (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) that fosters cooperation between DFKI projects and departments on the development and use of Semantic Web and Web3.0 technologies based on XML, RDF, RDF Schema, OWL, rule languages and (semantic) web services.

The Semantic Web is a central activity of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for representing web information in a machine-readable fashion - such that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration, and reuse across applications. DFKI has long been working in technologies highly relevant to the Semantic Web such as ontologies, semantic metadata, rule systems, and information extraction.

A main focus of CCSW is on distributed information and knowledge management with standardized Semantic Web based knowledge representation languages such as RDF and OWL. CCSW considers the Semantic Web as a higher-level structure emerging from a multitude of semantic subwebs, each serving the needs of a specific Web community, e.g.

• ontology-based eScience applications in biomedicine and other sciences
• semantic analysis for business intelligence in finance and government
• community-based intelligent web applications in the media industry

Our slogan Semantic Web from the Bottom Up emphasizes the focus we have also on a data-driven approach to Semantic Web development, for instance by exploring methods for the semi-automatic extraction of semantic metadata and ontologies using natural language processing and machine learning. Another important topic is semantic information integration, i.e. the alignment, merging, and transformation of heterogeneous data sources - data bases, semi-structured knowledge resources, unstructured text and multimedia documents - through semantic metadata, ontologies and rules.

CCSW offers consulting services in all aspects of Semantic Web development, e.g.

• ontology creation, learning, implementation and maintenance
• knowledge markup of legacy data - including textual and multimedia data
• inference and reasoning

The Competence Center's website: http://semanticweb.dfki.de/