ERCIM News No.25 - April 1996 - GMD
ZENO - A Group Decision Support System for the World Wide Web
by Thomas F. Gordon, Nikos Karacapilidis and Hans Voss
ZENO is a mediating system based on the World Wide Web. Building on decision
theory and a formal model of argumentation, ZENO offers intelligent assistance
to human mediators, facilitators, arbitrators and other "trusted third
parties" by providing an issue-based discussion forum or conferencing
system.
ZENO allows an arbitrary large number of interested parties in various locations
to take part in a discussion and decision making process that may extend
over a long period of time. Using the graphical ZENO interface over the
World Wide Web, even inexperienced users can easily view the structure of
all arguments presented so far, retrieve messages submitted by other parties
and contribute messages presenting their issues, arguments and positions.
These messages may include any HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) hypermedia
elements, such as links to other resources on the World Wide Web, images,
movies and sound files.
ZENO places issues, positions and arguments into a 'picture' which is richer,
more precise and focused than the "thread" mechanism typical of
news groups. This structure provides a view on the messages which substantially
facilitates the browsing and retrieval of relevant past contributions to
the discussion. Alternative solutions (i.e. positions) proposed for issues
can be prioritized. Using reason maintenance and constraint satisfaction
procedures, the preferences expressed in the arguments brought forward by
the participants are summarized.
The ZENO server is a piece of software written in Java. This will eventually
allow it to be used with a variety of World Wide Web servers and operating
systems. The index produced by ZENO is stored in a relational database,
allowing messages and the argumentation elements within messages - such
as issues, positions, and arguments - to be selected, filtered and sorted
using standard SQL queries (Structured Query Language); thus, any SQL-database
can be used with the ZENO server. The ZENO server hides the SQL-technicalities
from the user. The use of established database technology provides transaction
control and improved security. User management and password protection can
be easily implemented.
ZENO will be further developed as part of GEOMED (GEOgraphical MEDiation),
which is a new project financed by the European Commission within the Telematics
Applications Programme. Urban and regional planning, and environmental assessment
procedures have been selected as pilot applications. Using the World Wide
Web as basic infrastructure, the project implements a distributed system
that provides open access to data from Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) for public planning and political decision making.
Three major components are currently envisioned: Information services will
provide easy and cost-effective access to distributed, heterogeneous geographical
databases. This includes facilities for finding relevant GIS data, converting
proprietary GIS data to standard formats for data interchange, as well as
ways of viewing and browsing GIS data from within Web browsers. Many of
these functions will be implemented using custom GIS applets written in
Java.
Documentation services will provide a `shared workspace' for storing and
retrieving documents and messages related to particular geographical planning
projects. This will be a convenient way for ordinary users to add information
to the hyperspace of documents available on the network. GEOMED plans to
integrate the BSCW system (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) which was
originally developed at GMD and which is being evolved in a separate European
Commision project entitled CoopWWW (Interoperable Tools for Cooperation
Support using the World Wide Web)
ZENO provides the basis for the mediation services being developed in GEOMED.
Pilot applications in real life urban and regional planning processes will
guide the evolution of ZENO's functionality, as it complements the information
and documentation services within GEOMED. As part of a feasibility study
for GEOMED, a model was created in cooperation with the City of Bonn to
demonstrate ZENO's potential benefits as a mediator's assistant: the documents
of a five-year regional planning project were modeled as ZENO messages.
Turning from retrospective modeling to actual `real time' use in GEOMED,
the ZENO demonstrator is now being extended to cover related segments of
the new high speed train line connecting Cologne and Frankfurt. The basic
version of the integrated services will be available for pilot applications
in the second quarter of 1997.
The GEOMED consortium consists of Intecs Sistemi, Coordinator (Italy), GMD,
Technical Director (Germany), Intrasoft (Greece), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
(Belgium), TNO-Physics and Electronics Laboratory (Netherlands), TNO-Building
and Construction Research (Netherlands), City of Bonn (Germany), City of
Tilburg (Netherlands), Tuscany Region (Italy) and the Technical Chamber
of Greece (Greece).
The ZENO project on the Web: http://nathan.gmd.de/projects/zeno.html
Please contact:
Thomas Gordon - GMD
Tel: +49 2241 14 2665
E-mail: thomas.gordon@gmd.de
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