Web services for knowledge-driven collaborative modeling

This paper describes new Web services that provide knowledge validation to panels of domain experts involved in the collaborative construction of models. Since 9/11, the intelligence community has moved aggressively to develop new IT infrastructures that make better use of their domain expertise to counter terrorism. While these infrastructures have the potential to improve the quality of intelligence produced by expert panels, use of collaboration tools often lacks sufficient motivation. We are addressing these concerns in our Schemer prototype. This is a DARPA-funded R&D effort to provide new consensus analysis services that process information acquired from human collaborators. Unlike previous approaches that support interactions between experts based on organizational relationships, Schemer leverages knowledge and its distribution among panelists to motivate use of available collaboration tools, i.e., knowledge-driven collaboration. Schemer services have been designed and implemented as a Web service that plays the critical role of a broker between information analysis/modeling tools and collaboration tools.