Analyzing and supporting cooperation management in online learning communities. Australian companies, universities and other organizations are competing with other nations in the ?knowledge market?, and given the size of Australia's population compared to many of its competitors, keeping a position at the forefront of knowledge production and innovation has become an economic necessity. Communities of practice and other forms of collaborative teams are becoming important as producers and dissemi ....Analyzing and supporting cooperation management in online learning communities. Australian companies, universities and other organizations are competing with other nations in the ?knowledge market?, and given the size of Australia's population compared to many of its competitors, keeping a position at the forefront of knowledge production and innovation has become an economic necessity. Communities of practice and other forms of collaborative teams are becoming important as producers and disseminators of knowledge and social capital. Our research will help such knowledge producing entities to make optimal use of modern communication media, employing elements of 'smart? technologies. Research outcomes will contribute to the design and support of knowledge building communities in form of guidelines and software tools.Read moreRead less
Efficient Processing of Complex Spatial Queries. Similarity search and join are two of the most popular yet complex queiries in spatial databases. They are also two of the major spatial data analysis paradigms. To complement the existing techniques, this project aims to investigate a more complex and important form of these two problems, and to develop novel framework to approach the proposed problems. The successful achievements of the project will not only bring new spatial data analysis techn ....Efficient Processing of Complex Spatial Queries. Similarity search and join are two of the most popular yet complex queiries in spatial databases. They are also two of the major spatial data analysis paradigms. To complement the existing techniques, this project aims to investigate a more complex and important form of these two problems, and to develop novel framework to approach the proposed problems. The successful achievements of the project will not only bring new spatial data analysis techniques but also deliever effective solutions to a number of real-life apllications.Read moreRead less
Managing conflicts in requirements engineering with argumentation frameworks. This project proposes to employ argumentation theory and frameworks to tackle the problem of conflict management and resolution in requirements engineering. Australia has a strong competitive advantage in the areas of belief change and conflict management. The outcomes of this project will provide an improved infrastructure for several areas of software engineering, including requirements engineering and software evol ....Managing conflicts in requirements engineering with argumentation frameworks. This project proposes to employ argumentation theory and frameworks to tackle the problem of conflict management and resolution in requirements engineering. Australia has a strong competitive advantage in the areas of belief change and conflict management. The outcomes of this project will provide an improved infrastructure for several areas of software engineering, including requirements engineering and software evolution management. More broadly, the work proposed here will enable the IT industry to adopt and utilise the techniques developed in a number of research fields of Artificial Intelligence in developing the robust and reliable software systems for the rapidly changing knowledge economy of the 21st century.Read moreRead less
Interest-based negotiation: theory and practice. The results of the project will provide theoretically sound technologies that can better support distributed resource and task allocation in complex problem solving settings. The combination of theoretical and practical outcomes from the research will enable these technologies to be applied in decision-making settings beyond those studied directly in the project. The project contributes to Australia's ability to compete in the emerging internation ....Interest-based negotiation: theory and practice. The results of the project will provide theoretically sound technologies that can better support distributed resource and task allocation in complex problem solving settings. The combination of theoretical and practical outcomes from the research will enable these technologies to be applied in decision-making settings beyond those studied directly in the project. The project contributes to Australia's ability to compete in the emerging international market for knowledge-based software applications. The project's key connections and integration with European research will also strengthen research collaboration and training opportunities for Australian based students. Read moreRead less
Acts of electronic negotiation: Overcoming communication barriers to transdisciplinary innovation in design. Improved collaboration between the diverse contributors to design in the construction industry is urgently needed to reduce waste, streamline production and improve performance. It is also a key to better and more advanced design. The quality of human to human interaction in computer mediated environments is critical to the occurrence of innovation between design disciplines. This project ....Acts of electronic negotiation: Overcoming communication barriers to transdisciplinary innovation in design. Improved collaboration between the diverse contributors to design in the construction industry is urgently needed to reduce waste, streamline production and improve performance. It is also a key to better and more advanced design. The quality of human to human interaction in computer mediated environments is critical to the occurrence of innovation between design disciplines. This project will create a pool of highly qualified personnel in this area in Australia, including participating designers introduced to novel empowering approaches to network communication. It will develop and apply knowledge from other disciplines to developing tools for the design community. Read moreRead less
Intelligent Self-Organizing Transport. The project aims to develop smart transport solutions for Australia's sprawling mega-cities with their complex challenges to provide mobility and equitable access, and with their susceptibility to failure in cases of disasters. In particular, the project will develop software establishing intelligent and self-organizing transport management in urban environments. The project has potential to increase the mobility of citizens, even in low-density suburbs, by ....Intelligent Self-Organizing Transport. The project aims to develop smart transport solutions for Australia's sprawling mega-cities with their complex challenges to provide mobility and equitable access, and with their susceptibility to failure in cases of disasters. In particular, the project will develop software establishing intelligent and self-organizing transport management in urban environments. The project has potential to increase the mobility of citizens, even in low-density suburbs, by reducing the desire for individual car traffic at the same time. Since a self-organizing transport management works ad-hoc, it can be deployed also in devastated areas, e.g., after disasters.Read moreRead less
Defence and Security Risk Assessment using Agent Based Distillations. Today's society continues to be occupied with the idea of risk. The recent events of September 11th, the Bali bombing, SARS, the bush fires in Canberra, and the Tsunami are examples of human-made and natural disasters. These events had dramatic consequences on the social, economic, and political environment and numerous industries. This project offers an innovative methodological paradigm for assessing risk through the transfe ....Defence and Security Risk Assessment using Agent Based Distillations. Today's society continues to be occupied with the idea of risk. The recent events of September 11th, the Bali bombing, SARS, the bush fires in Canberra, and the Tsunami are examples of human-made and natural disasters. These events had dramatic consequences on the social, economic, and political environment and numerous industries. This project offers an innovative methodological paradigm for assessing risk through the transfer of technologies drawn from defence simulations to the safety and security areas. The success of this project will mark a paradigm shift in the area of risk assessment and management.Read moreRead less
Multi-dimensional Temporal Abstraction to Support Neonatal Clinical Research. Each year, the death of a baby causes grief for thousands of Australian parents, contributes to depression and considerable anxiety in the population. In this work we propose procedures that will significantly reduce this unhappy scenario. The availability of a complex trend and pattern analysis will give Neonatologists access to predictive clinical analysis that has not previously been available locally or internation ....Multi-dimensional Temporal Abstraction to Support Neonatal Clinical Research. Each year, the death of a baby causes grief for thousands of Australian parents, contributes to depression and considerable anxiety in the population. In this work we propose procedures that will significantly reduce this unhappy scenario. The availability of a complex trend and pattern analysis will give Neonatologists access to predictive clinical analysis that has not previously been available locally or internationally. Thus, significant benefits in terms of lower mortality rates and lower long-term disability rates among babies requiring special care is possible. This research will provide the basis for future projects that will support regional hospitals.Read moreRead less
Learning strategies for personal agents to assist professional users in searching the Web. Many professional groups have large unmet information needs, with significant consequences for the public. We will take a novel strategy-based approach to the design of agents that assist humans in information search tasks, which represents a significant departure from the dominant paradigm of content-based retrieval. Our goal is to develop automated methods to learn task specific search strategies, embed ....Learning strategies for personal agents to assist professional users in searching the Web. Many professional groups have large unmet information needs, with significant consequences for the public. We will take a novel strategy-based approach to the design of agents that assist humans in information search tasks, which represents a significant departure from the dominant paradigm of content-based retrieval. Our goal is to develop automated methods to learn task specific search strategies, embed them in agents, and use them to guide human-agent interactions and search behaviours. To discover the effectiveness of our approach we will evaluate our methods with health care professionals.Read moreRead less
Engineering safe decision support systems for healthcare. System safety is critical to the success of large-scale computerisation being undertaken to improve the quality of health services delivery worldwide. The research program will develop innovative tools and methods to improve the safety of clinical information systems. The focus on electronic prescribing systems will ensure that the outcomes of this research will have immediate impact on reducing medication errors which are a significant p ....Engineering safe decision support systems for healthcare. System safety is critical to the success of large-scale computerisation being undertaken to improve the quality of health services delivery worldwide. The research program will develop innovative tools and methods to improve the safety of clinical information systems. The focus on electronic prescribing systems will ensure that the outcomes of this research will have immediate impact on reducing medication errors which are a significant public health issue both nationally and internationally. Read moreRead less