Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Masters of Science (Research)

Department

Computing

First Advisor

Prof. Dr. Udo Bleimann

Second Advisor

Prof. Dr. Christoph Wentzel

Third Advisor

Dr. Paul Walsh

Abstract

What is the 'knowledge' of a university? It is the sum of all experiences and all contributions of students and staff. Knowledge ultimately exists, among other things, in the form of theses, articles, lectures and research reports. The largest knowledge pool of a university is made up, however, of the knowledge and expertise of every single member of the university. As a result of the high rate of turnover of people, knowledge and expertise are on the one hand constantly being lost, but this is replaced by a fresh intake of upcoming young students and lecturers reflecting the spirit of their time. In contrast to commercial enterprises, the knowledge of a university is relatively heterogeneous. The knowledge of a university is a living entity moving at speed and, on account of the many branches of study covered, also forms a part of the current total knowledge of society.

In order to model the knowledge of a modern university, such as the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt, a semantic ontology was constructed in which, in a first step, all organisational units and people were represented. Furthermore, all publications existing in electronic form were imported and semantic relations were established with people and departments. A networked topic area was created in parallel, which reflects the majority of all relevant topics in the departments. The creation of an h_da specific topic area was achieved by merging and mapping existing ontologies. By semantic linking of publications and lectures with topics, the university ultimately has an experts' portal at its disposal. And the question of who has expert knowledge about specific topics can be answered by a wide range of different semantic relations.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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