***************************** Call for Papers *******************************

BuRO 2010
1st International Workshop on Business Models,
Business Rules and Ontologies
http://ontorule-project.eu/dissemination/events/buro2010
Bressanone/Brixen, Italy

co-located with the
4th International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems (RR 2010)
September 22-24 2010
http://www.rr-conference.org/RR2010/
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It is a challenge in a business to enable the right people to interact in their
own way with the right part of their business application. We distinguish
between three views on the business organization: (1) the view of the business
analyst using a formal and validated business model; (2) the view of the
knowledge engineer via ontologies and rules, and (3) the view of the IT
department via an operationalization in applications. We can glue these views
together via an end-to-end point solution: (1) conceptualization and where
possible acquisition of business models and their transformation into
ontologies and rules; (2) their management and maintenance, and (3) the
transparent operationalization in IT applications.

The vision at the heart of the Semantic Web is of high relevance in a business
setting as well. The proposed workshop addresses the different issues that
arise in a business that wishes to have a transparent and where possible and
useful a semi-automatic transfer of knowledge present in business documents
expressing, e.g., policies, to an IT operationalization. Moreover, the workshop
tackles these issues from an holistic perspective, raising awareness for the
overall picture, instead of focusing on stand-alone issues. E.g., although OWL
is well-investigated it is unclear how business knowledge expressed in SBVR can
be mapped to it. Another example is the W3C's RIF effort: although based on
well-investigated rule paradigms, it is less well-connected to upper business
layers: how to go from a formal business model to RIF rules and how to interact
with derived ontologies?

During the ONTORULE project which shares a similar vision on a business, it has
been recognized that this holistic view goes beyond the results attainable
within the project and that much more discussion and exchange is needed. As
such the workshop wants to create awareness with researchers in stand-alone
fields like ontology acquisition, business modeling, integration of ontologies
and rules, implementations of rule/ontology engines, that there is a bigger
picture that can and should be used to extract requirements on the one hand and
to provide output that is fine-tuned for other fields on the other hand.


TOPICS OF INTEREST

Suggested topics include the following (but are not limited to):

* the acquisition of ontologies and rules from unstructured text via Natural
Language Processing (NLP) techniques

* the development of a complete, formal and validated business model, taking
all possible inputs into account (people and documents, structured and
unstructured, some of which as output from an NLP phase), using the Semantics
of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)

* transformation from structured business representations, from SBVR, to
RDF/OWL and/or rules

* the management and maintenance of business models, ontologies and rules,
e.g., consistency maintenance and the integration of rules and ontologies
(semantics, algorithms)

* implementations of such management systems

* use cases and field reports


SUBMISSIONS

We invite full papers up to 14 pages length. The workshop content will be made
available in separate workshop proceedings. Please use the Springer LNCS format
for the papers. Submitted papers will be reviewed by at least two members of
the program committee. Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format.
For paper submission we use the EasyChair conference management system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=buro2010

IMPORTANT DATES

* Submission deadline: Aug 6, 2010
* Notification of acceptance: August 20, 2010
* Camera-ready paper submission: September 3, 2010
* Workshop: September 21, 2010

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

* Thomas Eiter, TU Vienna, Austria
* Adil El Ghali, IBM, France
* Sergio Fernández, Fundación CTIC, Spain
* Stijn Heymans, TU Vienna, Austria
* François Lévy, Université Paris 13, France