Semantic web for net-enabled decision making

The paper introduces a Semantic Web approach for net-enabled decision making. The Semantic Web ontology language OWL-DL is used to specify the vocabulary and relationships linking situational and decision making semantics for the decision domain. The knowledge is stored as an ontology library of templates where each template is a parameterized causal model fragment that can be instantiated to situation-specific Bayesian networks for course of action reasoning. Our semantic web approach allows semantic interoperability in joint distributed decision making with multiple information sources. The approach shortens the decision cycle and reduces the cognitive burden on the decision-maker. The paper illustrates the approach on a prototype application for course of action in military effects based operations.