Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology developme ....Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology development, with applications in areas including concept-based multi-document summarisation and email surveillance.Read moreRead less
A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to ....A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to question answering with approaches that look at the logical contents of the questions and answer candidates. A central part of the project will be the characterisation of the optimal logical forms, the determination of efficient methods to create and store sentence logical forms of potentially large volumes of text, and the treatment of difficult questions by incorporating summarisation and text generation techniques.Read moreRead less
A Layered Controlled Natural Language for Knowledge Representation. In this research project we will develop a controlled natural language for knowledge representation that has the potential to bridge the gap between fragments of natural language and formal languages. This controlled language will be based on a variety of increasing sophisticated layers, each building upon those below it by providing enhancements in expressive power. Sentences of the controlled language will be unambiguously tra ....A Layered Controlled Natural Language for Knowledge Representation. In this research project we will develop a controlled natural language for knowledge representation that has the potential to bridge the gap between fragments of natural language and formal languages. This controlled language will be based on a variety of increasing sophisticated layers, each building upon those below it by providing enhancements in expressive power. Sentences of the controlled language will be unambiguously translatable into a corresponding formal language. Anyone who can read and write English can immediately use the controlled language with the help an intelligent text editor. This technology will make it possible for non-specialists to write problem specifications in terms of the application domain without the need to formally encode the information.Read moreRead less
A study of the potential for the public to be involved in the design of large scale public works. Public acceptability of infrastructure such as desalination plants or new public spaces, is a concern for the Australian Commonwealth and State Governments. However, tensions exist between the need for expedient planning and development of critical public infrastructure and Australian principles of democratic social and economic participation. The instrument developed by this research will inform pu ....A study of the potential for the public to be involved in the design of large scale public works. Public acceptability of infrastructure such as desalination plants or new public spaces, is a concern for the Australian Commonwealth and State Governments. However, tensions exist between the need for expedient planning and development of critical public infrastructure and Australian principles of democratic social and economic participation. The instrument developed by this research will inform public policy to negotiate and understand arrangements that balance social participation with Government objectives.Read moreRead less
Dynamic Scheduling and Stochastic Control for Sensor Networks. Sensor networks are rapidly becoming important in applications from environmental monitoring, navigation to border surveillance. However, due to bandwidth constraints, even very simple networks have proven to be very complex to properly control. It is now necessary to efficiently allocate the 'limited available bandwidth' to sensors in order to share the most valuable data over the network. Therefore, this project proposes new techn ....Dynamic Scheduling and Stochastic Control for Sensor Networks. Sensor networks are rapidly becoming important in applications from environmental monitoring, navigation to border surveillance. However, due to bandwidth constraints, even very simple networks have proven to be very complex to properly control. It is now necessary to efficiently allocate the 'limited available bandwidth' to sensors in order to share the most valuable data over the network. Therefore, this project proposes new techniques using concepts of dynamic sensor scheduling and stochastic control to provide computationally feasible and near optimal solutions to the limited and varying bandwidth problem. This work will greatly enhance the operational performance of distributed sensor networks.Read moreRead less
Sentiment detection from opinion surveys -- the quest for customer and employee satisfaction. The research will yield improved international standing through scientific advances disseminated through high impact refereed publications and open source software. The advances made through the application of sophisticated probabilistic techniques to Language Technology problems will attract post-graduate students, and promote commercial interest. The demonstration prototype will provide proof of conce ....Sentiment detection from opinion surveys -- the quest for customer and employee satisfaction. The research will yield improved international standing through scientific advances disseminated through high impact refereed publications and open source software. The advances made through the application of sophisticated probabilistic techniques to Language Technology problems will attract post-graduate students, and promote commercial interest. The demonstration prototype will provide proof of concept of an application that enables business intelligence to automatically process free-form feedback from customers and employees, with resultant recommendations leading to increased customer and employee satisfaction. The applicability of the outcomes of this research to service industries will further improve Australia's service reputation.Read moreRead less
Query interpretation and response generation in large on-line resources. The unprecedented information explosion associated with the evolution of the Internet makes salient the challenge of providing users with answers to queries posed to Internet resources. The proposed project will apply machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty techniques to leverage the large amount of data found in the Internet in order to perform three tasks: (1) infer users' informational goals from their questions ....Query interpretation and response generation in large on-line resources. The unprecedented information explosion associated with the evolution of the Internet makes salient the challenge of providing users with answers to queries posed to Internet resources. The proposed project will apply machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty techniques to leverage the large amount of data found in the Internet in order to perform three tasks: (1) infer users' informational goals from their questions, (2) modify questions to improve the accuracy of retrieval engines, and (3) compose concise replies from the retrieved documents. The envisioned outcome of this project is a system that will generate replies to questions posed to on-line resources.Read moreRead less
Deja-Vu -- A mechanism for constructing dialogue memory for resource-bounded agents. The ability to provide contextual information during interactions with computer systems has great potential to improve the overall experience for users. We propose to develop such an ability in the form of an automatically generated, continuously updated ``dialogue memory'', which may reside at server sites or in the PDAs of individual users. This memory will be generated by means of a novel approach which combi ....Deja-Vu -- A mechanism for constructing dialogue memory for resource-bounded agents. The ability to provide contextual information during interactions with computer systems has great potential to improve the overall experience for users. We propose to develop such an ability in the form of an automatically generated, continuously updated ``dialogue memory'', which may reside at server sites or in the PDAs of individual users. This memory will be generated by means of a novel approach which combines Natural Language techniques to extract dialogue features, model-selection techniques to cluster related dialogues, and cognitive modeling techniques to prune the resultant memories. The implemented computer system will be tested in the domain of trouble-shooting dialogues.Read moreRead less
A Minimum Message Length Approach for Discourse Interpretation. The ability to communicate with computer systems in Natural Language has great potential to improve the overall experience for users. However, current systems support only limited means of communication. In this project, we propose to investigate the application of model-selection techniques for interpreting human discourse. In particular, we will consider situations where the computer interprets users' discourse in the context of i ....A Minimum Message Length Approach for Discourse Interpretation. The ability to communicate with computer systems in Natural Language has great potential to improve the overall experience for users. However, current systems support only limited means of communication. In this project, we propose to investigate the application of model-selection techniques for interpreting human discourse. In particular, we will consider situations where the computer interprets users' discourse in the context of its own knowledge. The versatility of our approach will be demonstrated by using it to (1) interpret discourse in a human-computer dialogue, (2) provide feedback to short essays, and (3) determine the impact of a document on a model.Read moreRead less
Automatic Ontology Learning and Data Reasoning in Web Mining. This research has an impact on both research and practical applications. In research, it provides opportunities for research students to carry out research using both data mining and data reasoning to solving Web based application problems. In practical, it can help IT industry to design the new generation of Web mining systems in order to provide invaluable service to users. This research also develops new techniques for data automa ....Automatic Ontology Learning and Data Reasoning in Web Mining. This research has an impact on both research and practical applications. In research, it provides opportunities for research students to carry out research using both data mining and data reasoning to solving Web based application problems. In practical, it can help IT industry to design the new generation of Web mining systems in order to provide invaluable service to users. This research also develops new techniques for data automatic processing within areas of smart information use in Australia. In particular it further develops data mining techniques by introducing data reasoning models for using discovered knowledge. It must be useful to improve the efficiency of the existing data mining systems. Read moreRead less