**Meet the editor**

Dr Carlos Ramirez received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The University of Kent at Canterbury, England, in December 1998. Currently, he is professor of artificial intelligence and theory of computation and research member of the Distributed and Adaptive Systems Lab for Learning Technologies Development, and of the Virtual and Robotic Agents Centre, with the

faculty of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. Dr. Ramirez research interests include cognitive informatics and computing, knowledge representation models, concept algebra, cognitive processes and inferences, dynamic concept networks, pattern and object recognition, and intelligent optimisation. He is member of several scientific organisations, has supervised numerous research and engineering projects and has publications in artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, dynamics and control and information retrieval.

Contents

**Preface IX** 

Chapter 2 **K-Relations and Beyond 19** 

**Section 2 Representations 41** 

Chapter 3 **A General Knowledge** 

Chapter 1 **That IS-IN Isn't IS-A: A Further Analysis** 

Jari Palomäki and Hannu Kangassalo

Melita Hajdinjak and Andrej Bauer

Chapter 4 **A Pipe Route System Design Methodology** 

Chapter 5 **Transforming Natural Language** 

**Section 3 Usage of Representations 135** 

Chapter 6 **Intelligent Information Access** 

Chapter 7 **Knowledge Representation in** 

and Nikos Papadakis

Yuehong Yin, Chen Zhou and Hao Chen

**Representation Model of Concepts 43**  Carlos Ramirez and Benjamin Valdes

**for the Representation of Imaginal Thinking 77** 

**Elicitation: A Knowledge Representation Approach 117** 

**into Controlled Language for Requirements** 

Carlos Mario Zapata J and Bell Manrique Losada

**a Proof Checker for Logic Programs 161**  Emmanouil Marakakis, Haridimos Kondylakis

**Based on Logical Semantic Binding Method 137**  Rabiah A. Kadir, T.M.T. Sembok and Halimah B. Zaman

**of Taxonomic Links in Conceptual Modelling 3** 

**Section 1 On Foundations 1** 

## Contents

#### **Preface XI**



## Preface

What is knowledge? How can the knowledge be explicitly represented? Many scientists from different fields of study have tried to answer those questions through history, though seldom agreed about the answers. Many representations have been presented by researchers working on a variety of fields, such as computer science, mathematics, cognitive computing, cognitive science, psychology, linguistic, and philosophy of mind. Some of those representations are computationally tractable, some are not; this book is concerned only with the first kind.

Although nowadays there is some degree of success on the called "knowledge‐based systems" and in certain technologies using knowledge representations, no single knowledge representations has been found complete enough to represent satisfactorily all the requirements posed by common cognitive processes, able to be manipulated by general purpose algorithms, nor to satisfy all sorts of applications in different domains and conditions—and may not be the case that such 'universal' computational representation exists‐‐, it is natural to look for different theories, models and ideas to explain it and how to instrument a certain model or representation. The compilation of works presented here advances topics such as concept theory, positive relational algebra and k‐relations, structured, visual and ontological models of knowledge representation, as well as applications to various domains, such as semantic representation and extraction, intelligent information retrieval, program proof checking, complex planning, and data preparation for knowledge modelling.

The state of the art research presented in the book on diverse facets of knowledge representation and applications is expected to contribute and encourage further advancement of the field. The book is addressed to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, to researchers concerned with the knowledge representation field, and also to computer oriented practitioners of diverse fields where complex computer applications based on knowledge are required.

The book is organised in three sections, starting with two chapters related to foundations of knowledge and concepts, section II includes three chapters on different views or models of how knowledge can be computationally represented, and section III presents six detailed applications of knowledge on different domains, with useful ideas on how to implement a representation in an efficient and practical way. Thus,

#### XII Preface

the chapters in this book cover a spectrum of insights into the foundations of concepts and relationships, models for the representation of knowledge, development and application of all of them. By organising the book in those three sections, I have simply tried to bring together similar things, in a natural way, that may be more useful to the reader.

> **Dr. Carlos Ramírez** Tec de Monterrey Querétaro, México
