Workplan

The aim of the WonderWeb project is to develop and demonstrate the infrastructure required for the large-scale deployment of ontologies as the foundation for the Semantic Web. This will be achieved by developing:

• A layered architecture of ontology languages that extend existing Web standards.
• Infrastructure and tools to support Web based ontological engineering.
• A set of foundational ontologies providing a carefully crafted taxonomic backbone that will facilitate extension and integration.
• Ontological engineering methodologies supporting versioning, modularization, adaptation and reuse.

Taken together, these components will constitute a complete methodology and toolkit supporting Web based ontological engineering and demonstrating its practical application.

The above components will be developed in five technical workpackages, each of which will be described in further detail (a sixth workpackage deals with project management).

The five workpackages have significant interdependencies, yet are sufficiently independent that their individual success is not wholly reliant on the results of other workpackages. Moreover, the workplan has been designed so that preliminary versions of important components will be delivered early in the project, e.g., the ontology language (month 9), the OntoServer architecture (month 6) and prototype (month 12), the preliminary ontology library (month 6) and the versioning framework (month 8). This will allow progress to be monitored, problems to be detected early, and contingency plans to be implemented if required.

Early delivery of the above components is made possible by the fact that members of the consortium are already leading developers of Web technologies. Each of the partners is an acknowledged world leader in their field, and the complementary areas of expertise within the group cover all relevant areas of Web technology including automated reasoning, (Web) ontology languages, Web applications, formal ontologies, knowledge engineering, conceptual modelling, ontology engineering, Web tools and systems, databases, data management, digital libraries, semi-structured data, e-business and e-commerce.

As well as generating a critical mass for research in a new and highly interdisciplinary area, the consortium will also have the necessary international standing to exert a significant influence over the development of the Semantic Web. Important cooperations have already been established between the partners and these links will be further extended in the project workpackages, facilitating the development of larger clusters, for example with projects in the IST Key Action II and III programmes.

The consortium is further strengthened by an industrial advisory board whose membership includes some of the World's leading providers and users of Web technology, ranging from large multi-nationals to small and medium enterprises specialising in Web technologies. These links with industry will ensure that the consortium is well informed about current industrial practice and requirements and will facilitate ongoing assessment and evaluation of results based on real life applications. They will also provide important dissemination and exploitation pathways for the new tools and technologies developed in the project.

Detailed Workpackage List