Semantic Web

Workshop Date  
Semantic Web 3-5 October 2001 Final report in pdf.
To order a paper copy, send email to office@ercim.org

Slides presented at the workshop

This workshop is part of the EU-NSF strategic research workshops organized by ERCIM under the auspices the European Commission (programme IST-FET) and the US National Science Foundation (CISE-NSF directorate) to identify key research challenges and opportunities in Information Technologies. The workshops are intended to facilitate brainstorming and awareness around potential breakthroughs in innovative domains, stimulate research activities and scientific discussions of mutual interest.
Participation is by invitation only, each workshop will be attended by a total of 20-30 international researchers and key actors from both Europe and the US. One important result of each workshop will be a scientific report identifying research challenges in the domain. Each participant at the workshop will be required to produce a position paper on a selected topic, which will be the basis of the discussions held at the workshop.

Objective of the workshop
The WWW is a major vehicle for the distribution of multimedia content, accessible from more and more various platforms. However, the topology of the WWW changes permanently and information from various locations differs in syntax, structure, semantcs…
The Semantic Web aims at enabling better access to Web content by providing a machine-readable conceptual structure for the Web. This requires new and advanced methods, models, tools and systems for services related to access, retrieval and filtering of Web-based content, in particular the development of new search systems and machines, in line with existing and emerging relevant standards. These services would typically be provided by intelligent agents.

The objective of the workshop is to discuss the future of the Semantic Web. The workshop will address the short term, with topics like:

But also some more speculative aspects concerning the long term.

Results
The results and the scientific report of the workshop are intended to serve as a basis for future collaboration between the EC and the NSF. These results will also be largely circulated to the scientific community for discussion and comments. The final copies of the reports will be sent to ISTAG, European Science Forum, STOA, members of the EU Parliament, Institute for Prospective Studies, Academia Europea, EURO HORCS.