EnviroPlanner: design and implementation of a distributed environmental querying system in rule responder
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Date
2013
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
Environmental information querying can be cumbersome and time-consuming
as users sometimes need to go through multiple Web pages for finding answers
to specific questions. As a prototype modeling a multi-agent Virtual Environmental
Organization (VEO), EnviroPlanner is developed to allow users to
retrieve and deduce environmental information via problem-oriented question
answering. In this thesis, we focus on the design and implementation of the
EnviroPlanner VEO model that is supported by rule and ontology knowledge.
This formalized knowledge allows EnviroPlanner's semi-automated agents to
assist human experts in environmental question answering. We realized EnviroPlanner
for distributed querying in the Rule Responder framework that
consists of three kinds of agents: External Agent (EA), Organizational Agent
(OA), and Personal Agents (PAs). The EA is the single point of entry that
allows users to pose queries to the system, employing a Web interface coupled
to an HTTP port to which requests are sent. EnviroPlanner consists of an extension
and an instantiation of the Rule Responder framework similar in the
communication architecture to the SymposiumPlanner-2011/2012 instantiations but in a very different knowledge domain. The SymposiumPlanner
systems since 2011 have used two Sub-Organizational Agents (Sub-OAs) for
question answering. We extended the framework to provide architectural
flexibility to developers so they can add as many Sub-OAs as needed, e.g.
for answering user queries about different locations or regions. The architecture
designed for environmental query answering has been implemented and
the EnviroPlanner prototype has been evaluated with respect to efficiency
and overall performance. In addition, the EnviroPlanner prototype has been
deployed on the official Rule Responder website.