About Inference Web

The Inference Web  is a Semantic Web based knowledge provenance infrastructure that supports interoperable explanations of sources, assumptions, learned information, and answers as an enabler for trust.

• Provenance - if users (humans and agents) are to use and integrate data from unknown, uncertain, or multiple sources, they need provenance metadata for evaluation
• Interoperability - more systems are using varied sources and multiple information manipulation engines, thus increasing interoperability requirements
• Explanation/Justification - if information has been manipulated (i.e., by sound deduction or by heuristic processes), information manipulation trace information should be available
• Trust - if some sources are more trustworthy than others, trust ratings are desired

The Inference Web consists of two important components:

• Proof Markup Language (PML) Ontology - Semantic Web based representation for exchanging explanations including
  • provenance information - annotating the sources of knowledge
  • justification information - annotating the steps for deriving the conclusions or executing workflows
  • trust information - annotating trustworthiness assertions about knowledge and sources
• IW Toolkit - Web-based and standalone tools that facilitate human users to browse, debug, explain, and abstract the knowledge encoded in PML.