Lost in Time, Space, and Meaning or How to Gain Situation Awareness in Large-Scale Control Systems

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Partners: ASFINAG, team Gmbh (Frequentis), Heusch-Bösefeldt

Funding: FFG - FIT-IT Semantic Systems

Employed Technologies: Eclipse, Java RCP, RDF triple stores, OWL, Colored Petri Nets (CPN tools)

Web: http://www.situation-awareness.net/

Team: DI (FH) Wolfgang Gottesheim, DI (FH) Dr. Stefan Mitsch, Assoc. Prof. Mag. Dr. Wieland Schwinger M.Sc., a.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Werner Retschitzegger


Summary of Project Focus. Large-scale control systems, as encountered, e.g., in the domain of road traffic management, typically deal with highly-dynamic environments providing a vast amount of information, stemming from multiple heterogeneous sources, about a large number of real-world objects anchored in time and space. In such systems, human operators are at permanent risk to get lost in the induced information overload failing to be aware of the overall meaning of the available information and its implications. This endangers the timely and correct identification, resolution and pro-active prevention of critical situations potentially causing serious impacts in the real world.

In the course of a FIT-IT project we are currently developing BeAware!, an ontology-driven framework for supporting situation awareness in large-scale control systems. A situation awareness ontology should facilitates the definition of domain-independent situation types consisting of constituting objects and relations in-between, heavily building on existing work in the area of qualitative spatio-temporal reasoning. The situation assessment mechanisms of BeAware! are responsible for the identification of sets of interrelated objects that satisfy the situation types of interest. To ensure the efficiency of this assessment process, a prior knowledge on relations between objects is encoded within the ontology in order to check the satisfiability of a situation type and assessment shortcuts for inferring relations between objects based on their subsumption lattices and their set-theoretic characteristics are introduced. In this respect, the concept of “conceptual neighbourhoods” of relations is used to assess situations being similar to an existing situation type as well as to assess evolving future situations. Concerning implementation of BeAware!, a pipes-and-filters architecture for ontology-driven information systems is proposed which rely on data asynchronously pushed from their sources.

The real-world adequacy of the developed framework is demonstrated in the domain of road traffic management using real-world traffic situations from the Austrian highways agency’s (ASFINAG) traffic management system.


Publications:

    2016

  1. "Salfinger, Andrea". Staying Aware in an Evolving World: Evolution Support for Situation Awareness in Control Centers. 2016. BibTeX 
    @phdthesis{DISS_Salfinger,
       title = {{Staying Aware in an Evolving World: Evolution Support for Situation Awareness in Control Centers}},
       author = {"Salfinger, Andrea"},
       year = {2016},
       type = {{DISS}}
    }

    2. 2014

  2. Norbert Baumgartner, Stefan Mitsch, Andreas Müller, Werner Retschitzegger, Andrea Salfinger, Wieland Schwinger. A Tour of BeAware! A Situation-Awareness Framework for Control Centers. Journal of Information Fusion, Elsevier. 20:155–173. November, 2014. PDF BibTeX 
    @article{Baumgartner2014,
       title = {{A Tour of BeAware! A Situation-Awareness Framework for Control Centers}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Stefan Mitsch and Andreas M{\"u}ller and Werner Retschitzegger and Andrea Salfinger and Wieland Schwinger},
       journal = {Journal of Information Fusion, Elsevier},
       year = {2014},
       pages = {155–173},
       volume = {20},
       month = {11}
    }

    3. 2012

  3. Angelika Kusel, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger, Ralph Mayr, Johannes Schönböck. Ontology-Driven Generation of Multi-View Modeling Tools. Proceedings of 11th IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering (SE 2012). WWW '12 Companion, pages: 45-51. ACTA Press, 2012. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Kusel2012,
       title = {{Ontology-Driven Generation of Multi-View Modeling Tools}},
       author = {Angelika Kusel and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger and Ralph Mayr and Johannes Sch\"{o}nb\"{o}ck},
       year = {2012},
       publisher = {ACTA Press},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of 11th IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering (SE 2012)},
       pages = {45-51},
       series = {WWW '12 Companion}
    }

    4. 2011

  4. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. SemGen - Towards a Semantic Data Generator for Benchmarking Duplicate Detectors. Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Data Quality in Integration Systems in conjunction with DASFAA 2011. Xu, Jianliang and Yu, Ge and Zhou, Shuigeng and Unland, Rainer, editors, pages: 490-501. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2011a,
       title = {{SemGen - Towards a Semantic Data Generator for Benchmarking Duplicate Detectors}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2011},
       publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Data Quality in Integration Systems in conjunction with DASFAA 2011},
       pages = {490-501}
    }
  5. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Reasoning on Data Streams for Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development (KEOD). 2011. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2011,
       title = {{Reasoning on Data Streams for Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2011},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development (KEOD)}
    }
  6. Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Towards Modeling Dynamic Behavior with Integrated Qualitative Spatial Relations. Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Semantic and Conceptual Issues in GIS (SeCoGIS 2011). pages: 271--280. Springer-Verlag, 2011. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Mitsch2011,
       title = {{Towards Modeling Dynamic Behavior with Integrated Qualitative Spatial Relations}},
       author = {Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2011},
       publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Semantic and Conceptual Issues in GIS (SeCoGIS 2011)},
       pages = {271--280}
    }

    7. 2010

  7. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Towards Duplicate Detection for Situation Awareness Based on Spatio-Temporal Relations. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2010). Meersman, Robert and Dillon, Tharam and Herrero, Pilar, editors, pages: 1097-1107. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2010. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2010c,
       title = {{Towards Duplicate Detection for Situation Awareness Based on Spatio-Temporal Relations}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2010},
       publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2010)},
       pages = {1097-1107}
    }
  8. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Situation Prediction Nets - Playing the Token Game for Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER). ER'10, pages: 202--218. Springer-Verlag, 2010. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2010,
       title = {{Situation Prediction Nets - Playing the Token Game for Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2010},
       publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER)},
       pages = {202--218},
       series = {ER'10}
    }
  9. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. BeAware! - Situation Awareness, the Ontology-Driven Way. Data & Knowledge Engineering. 69(11):1181-1193. 2010. PDF BibTeX 
    @article{Baumgartner2010a,
       title = {{BeAware! - Situation Awareness, the Ontology-Driven Way}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       journal = {Data \& Knowledge Engineering},
       year = {2010},
       pages = {1181-1193},
       volume = {69},
       number = {11}
    }
  10. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Improving Situation Awareness in Traffic Management. Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Quality in Databases, QDB 2010 @ VLDB. 2010. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2010b,
       title = {{Improving Situation Awareness in Traffic Management}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2010},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Quality in Databases, QDB 2010 @ VLDB}
    }

    11. 2009

  11. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. On Optimization of Predictions in Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management (KSEM 2009). Karagiannis, Dimitris and Jin, Zhi, editors, pages: 297-309. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2009,
       title = {{On Optimization of Predictions in Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2009},
       publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management (KSEM 2009)},
       pages = {297-309}
    }
  12. Norbert Baumgartner, Wolfgang Gottesheim, Stefan Mitsch, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Same, Same but Different - A Survey on Duplicate Detection Methods for Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2009). pages: 1050--1068. Springer-Verlag, 2009. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2009a,
       title = {{Same, Same but Different - A Survey on Duplicate Detection Methods for Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Wolfgang Gottesheim and Stefan Mitsch and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2009},
       publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2009)},
       pages = {1050--1068}
    }

    13. 2008

  13. Norbert Baumgartner, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. A Software Architecture for Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM SAC). SAC 2008, pages: 2326--2330. ACM, 2008. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2008a,
       title = {{A Software Architecture for Ontology-Driven Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2008},
       publisher = {ACM},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM SAC)},
       pages = {2326--2330},
       series = {SAC 2008}
    }

    14. 2007

  14. Norbert Baumgartner, Werner Retschitzegger. Towards a Situation Awareness Framework Based on Primitive Relations. Proceedings of the Conference on Information, Decision, and Control (IDC 2007). 2007. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2007b,
       title = {{Towards a Situation Awareness Framework Based on Primitive Relations}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Werner Retschitzegger},
       year = {2007},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the Conference on Information, Decision, and Control (IDC 2007)}
    }
  15. Norbert Baumgartner, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Lost in Space and Time and Meaning - An Ontology-Based Approach to Road Traffic Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Context Awareness for Proactive Systems (CAPS 2007). 2007. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2007a,
       title = {{Lost in Space and Time and Meaning - An Ontology-Based Approach to Road Traffic Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2007},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Context Awareness for Proactive Systems (CAPS 2007)}
    }
  16. Norbert Baumgartner, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger, Gabriele Kotsis, Christoph Schwietering. Of Situations and Their Neighbors: Evolution and Similarity in Ontology-Based Approaches to Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Confernce on Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2007). pages: 29--42. Springer-Verlag, 2007. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2007,
       title = {{Of Situations and Their Neighbors: Evolution and Similarity in Ontology-Based Approaches to Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger and Gabriele Kotsis and Christoph Schwietering},
       year = {2007},
       publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Confernce on Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2007)},
       pages = {29--42}
    }

    17. 2006

  17. Norbert Baumgartner, Werner Retschitzegger. A Survey of Upper Ontologies for Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Engineering (KSCE '06). pages: 1-9. 2006. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Baumgartner2006,
       title = {{A Survey of Upper Ontologies for Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Norbert Baumgartner and Werner Retschitzegger},
       year = {2006},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Engineering (KSCE '06)},
       pages = {1-9}
    }