Visualizing Semantic Web proofs of defeasible logic in the DR-DEVICE system

The Semantic Web aims at improving the current Web, by augmenting its content with semantics and encouraging the cooperation among human users and machines. Since the basic Semantic Web infrastructure is reaching sufficient maturity, research efforts are shifting towards logic, proof and trust and rule-based systems inevitably concentrate most of the attention. Nevertheless, in order for human users to trust system answers, they have to be presented with adequate explanations that justify the derived results. And, even more importantly, these explanations have to be presented in a user-comprehensible format. Consequently, the focus in this work is on humans and the research area called proof visualization that features three main approaches: tree-based, graphical and logical/textual. Since each of the approaches presents advantages and disadvantages, this article proposes a fourth, hybrid visualization approach that combines the pros of all three approaches and attempts to leverage the respective cons. The article also presents a software tool that implements the proposed hybrid approach. The tool is called VProof(H) and visualizes defeasible logic proofs, offering multiple representations that adapt to user needs. Extensive scalability and user evaluation tests prove the software tool's usability. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.