Semantic Knowledge-based Decision Support

In any complex environment – such as managing a battlespace, launching a satellite, or operating a global enterprise – critical decisions depend on a broad range of information sources, decision-making guidelines, and an array of operational and environmental factors. These challenges highlight the need for decision support systems whose decisions are based on both structured and unstructured information sources, and that can explain their decisions in a manner that garners trust from those relying on its conclusions. The Cyc knowledge-based environment supports many of the capabilities needed for such a system. Its Semantic Knowledge Source Integration functionality permits smooth integration with structured information sources, while its inference engine and NL generation capabilities provide textual justifications for its actions. Unstructured data (such as text documents, imagery, videos, etc.) can be mapped to the Cyc ontology to model their content as well as to identify key metadata (such as the source, creation date, scope, etc.), enabling material from unstructured sources to be seamlessly included in the decision process. We propose to design a decision support architecture around these existing capabilities that would gracefully incorporate a wide variety of information sources and offer greater transparency into its decision making process.