Experiences of Knowledge Visualization in Semantic Web Applications

There is an increasing need for usable tools to support knowledge elicitation, formalization and management. As an answer to this need, this paper describes fully integrated semantic web framework experiences, where users can represent and manage their data in a visual way, without the need of semantic web experts as intermediaries. These frameworks typically incorporate an ontology editor, a resource editor, reasoning capabilities and intuitive interaction and visualization facilities. The use of effective visualization techniques to graphically represent ontologies is investigated and the Easy Onto prototype is presented. In addition, different semantic web frameworks have been implemented as a result of research projects in different domains. In particular this paper presents the IRCS framework, an intelligent software to semantically index, search, and navigate the documentation used in water management plants, and the AWI environment, a collaborative environment aiming to collect and share knowledge of user communities, within the context of a digital factory.