12/23/11

This page contains descriptions of specific PhD projects I am interested in supervising.  Check also my research interests for a broader view of a PhD topic.

If you are interested in any of these topics or in areas relevant to my research, then please feel free to get in touch.

PROJECT TITLE:  Spatio-temporal Linked Data Web

KEYWORDS: Linked Data Web, Semantic Web, Spatial and Temporal data and Query Languages

DESCRIPTION:

The rapid growth of structured data on the Web is creating a need for research in the paradigm of structured-data retrieval. Traditional search engines cannot serve such data as results of keyword-based queries that are typically ambiguous. Also, traditional structured querying languages cannot be used directly, as data on the Data Web is heterogeneous, distributed, schema-free, and not intuitive for web users.

This project will focus on geographic data.  The spatial and temporal dimensions of this data imply the need for techniques that allow their efficient structuring and retrieval.  The research will investigate the possibility of utilizing and porting existing established research in the area of geographic data management and GIS. 

PROJECT TITLE:  Exploiting Space and Time for User Modelling and Personalisation on the Web

KEYWORDS: Online personalisation, Linked and Social Data Web, Spatial and Geographic Data modeling and management

DESCRIPTION:

Mobile and pervasive computing technologies have become an integral part of everyday life.   The rapidly growing availability and trends of personal data collection on mobile devices raises the need for user modeling and personalization in different contexts including personalization on the web.   The project will study the processes of collection and inference of relevant user knowledge from location-aware sensors (e.g. GPS devices), then will address the questions of aggregating, integrating such information into user models and the provision of access to this information in a personalized manner. 

PROJECT TITLE:  Practical Spatio-temporal Reasoning on the Semantic Web

KEYWORDS: Semantic Web technologies, Rule languages, Geospatial data management

DESCRIPTION:

References to geographic information on the web are now common in web content and in search queries.  The growing use of this information on the web is deriving the need for ontology and rule languages to support their management and retrieval.  Current ontology and rule languages, for example, OWL and RIF, are not designed for spatial or geospatial domains.  This project will investigate frameworks and languages for representing and reasoning over geospatial information, and in particular, the integration of different types of reasoning to facilitate the manipulation of uncertain and incomplete information.  The project will investigate how this reasoning can be integrated within the logic-based paradigm of the current semantic web languages.