Call for Papers: MPM 2011: Workshop on Modelling Policy-making

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 24 October 2011 — has been issued for MPM 2011: Workshop on Modelling Policy-making, to be held 12 or 13 December 2011, in Vienna, Austria, in conjunction with JURIX 2011.

For MPM 2011, the program committee co-chairs are Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science, and Dr. Neil Benn of the University of Leeds Institute of Communications Studies. Dr. Wyner and Dr. Benn are both members of the team for Project IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis.

For MPM 2011, papers are invited on the following topics:

• information extraction from natural language text
• policy ontologies
• formal logical representations of policies
• transformations from policy language to executable policy rules
• argumentation about policy proposals
• web-based tools that support participatory policy-making
• tools for increasing public understanding of arguments behind policy decisions
• visualising policies and arguments about policies
• computational models of policies and arguments about policies
• integration tools
• multi-agent policy simulations

For more information, please see the call for papers.

Wyner & van Engers on Web-based Mass Argumentation in Natural Language

Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Leeds Centre for Digital Citizenship and Professor Dr. Tom van Engers of the University of Amsterdam’s Leibniz Center for Law have posted Towards Web-based Mass Argumentation in Natural Language (2010), a paper submitted for EKAW 2010.

The paper arises from the EU project IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis.

Here is the abstract:

Within the artificial intelligence community, argumentation has been studied for quite some years now. Despite progress, the field has not yet succeeded in creating support tools that members of the public could use to contribute their views to discussions of public policy. One important reason for that is that the input statements of participants in policy-making discussions are put forward in natural language, while translating the statements into the formal models used by argumentation scientists is cumbersome. These formal models can be used to automatically reason with, query, or transmit domain knowledge using web-based technologies. Making this knowledge explicit, formal, and expressed in a language which a machine can process is a labour, time, and knowledge intensive task. To make such translation and it requires expertise that most participants in policy-making debates do not have. In this paper we describe an approach with which we aim at contributing to a solution of this knowledge acquisition bottle-neck. We propose a novel, integrated methodology and framework which adopts and adapts existing technologies. We use semantic wikis which support mass, collaborative, distributive, dynamic knowledge acquisition. In particular, ACEWiki incorporates NLP tools, enabling linguistically competent users to enter their knowledge in natural language, while yielding a logical form that is suitable for automated processing. In the paper we will explain how we can extend the ACEWiki and augment it with argumentation tools which elicit knowledge from users, making implicit information explicit, and generate subsets of consistent knowledge bases from inconsistent knowledge bases. To a set of consistent propositions, we can apply automated reasoners, allowing users to draw inferences and make queries. The methodology and framework take a fragmentary, incremental development approach to knowledge acquisition in complex domains.

Wyner, van Engers & Bahreini, From Policy-Making Statements to First-Order Logic

Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Leeds Centre for Digital Citizenship and Professor Dr. Tom van Engers and Kiavash Bahreini, both of the University of Amsterdam’s Leibniz Center for Law have posted From Policy-Making Statements to First-Order Logic (2010), a paper submitted for eGOVIS 2010.

The paper arises from the EU project IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis.

Here is the abstract:

Within a framework for enriched on-line discussion forums for e-government policy-making, pro and con statements for positions are input, structurally related, then logically represented and evaluated. The framework builds on current technologies for multi-threaded discussion, natural language processing, ontologies, and formal argumentation frameworks. This paper focuses on the natural language processing of statements in the framework. A small sample policy discussion is presented. We adopt and apply a controlled natural language (Attempto Controlled English) to constrain the domain of discourse, eliminate ambiguity and unclarity, allow a logical representation of statements which supports inference and consistency checking, and facilitate information extraction. Each of the policy statements is automatically translated into first-order logic. The result is logical representation of the policy discussion which we can query, draw inferences (given ground statements), test for consistency, and extract detailed information.

Ph.D. Student Position in Policy-Related Argument Reconstruction

Applications are invited for a position for a Ph.D. candidate to work on a research project in policy-related argument reconstruction and formalization, at The Leibniz Center for Law of the University of Amsterdam. The candidate must have “a background in computational linguistics, or artificial intelligence, with an interest in argumentation. Experience with semantic web technology and practical IT skills are an advantage. Candidates should be proficient in English.”

The position is in connection with IMPACT (Improving Access to Text), “an international project, partially funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework programme. [IMPACT] will conduct original research to develop and integrate formal, computational models of policy and arguments about policy, to facilitate deliberations about policy at a conceptual, language-independent level. To support the analysis of policy proposals in an inclusive way which respects the interests of all stakeholders, research on tools for reconstructing arguments from data resources distributed throughout the Internet will be conducted. The key problem is translation from these sources in natural language to formal argumentation structures, which will be input for automatic reasoning.

“The candidate will be working on the design of an argument reconstruction tool, which uses a library of argumentation schemes to support the manual reconstruction of arguments from natural language texts. Moreover, an extension of existing XML formats for weblogs, such as RSS or Atom, will be developed which would enable future weblogs to mark up the structure of arguments in articles in such a way as to enable the arguments to be automatically aggregated, analysed and visualized, without human intervention. The extension may be based on the argument elements of the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF) developed previously by the partners in the ESTRELLA project (IST-2004-027655). The research will result in several publications, including a PhD thesis.”

For more information, please see the position announcement.

HT Dr. Radboud Winkels.