Tuesday, 5/22/2007
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Level: Case Study

Last year at SemTech, we presented an overview of an operational ontology-based enterprise information integration (EII) solution developed as part of the Knowledge Management Initiative at the USAF 45th Space Wing in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The primary goal of the KMI is to provide Eastern Range stakeholders with a semantically unified, web-based view of distributed range information—a Single Integrated Range Picture — through a virtual, federated, ontology-based enterprise model we call the Knowledge Management Framework. This year, we update the progress we have made since last year’s presentation, which is of great interest to senior leadership in the USAF. We describe:

• The value proposition: business case for ontology-based information integration
• The Knowledge Management Framework: our semantic service-oriented architecture
• Integration of structured and unstructured data via a common ontology
• Operational applications using KMF to access semantically integrated information from distributed, operational data sources
• Methodology for ontology-based information integration
• Alignment of our approach with the Network-Centric Data Strategy and the USAF Metadata Environment (under Secretary of the Air Force’s CIO’s office)
• Lessons learned and future plans. We conclude with a demonstration of applications that use our ontology to access semantically integrated data on the fly from operational data sources.

Kent D. Bimson, Ph.D., is President and Founder of Bimson Consulting, which focuses on growing business through technology innovation, with specific emphasis on deploying real world semantic architecture solutions. Kent’s visionary work has led to a successful semantic interoperability initiative for the USAF—the Knowledge Management Initiative—that has become a key strategic objective of the 45th Space Wing in Cape Canaveral, Florida. His technical specialties include enterprise information integration (EII) technology, metadata representation, ontology modeling, knowledge-based systems, decision support systems, expert systems, and simulation. Dr. Bimson served as Chief Scientist and Vice President at SAIC and Research Scientist at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. He has taught on the faculty of the University of California, Davis; California State University, Sacramento; and California State University, Northridge in both Computer Science and Linguistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCLA and a M.S. in Computer Science from California State University, Sacramento.

Richard W. Sirmons is an Operations Research Analyst and is Chief of the Knowledge Management Systems section of the 45th Range Management Squadron at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. He has been involved with software development, information integration projects and information assurance for the 45th Space Wing since 1995. He is retired from the Air Force Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel with experience as a pilot and a historian. Sirmons holds a BS in Life Science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an MA in History from Indiana University, and an MS in Systems Management from Florida Institute of Technology.