Appendix VII: Knowledge representation and modeling at GRS

Knowledge representation as a scientific domain has gained strong momentum, particularly in view of the 'Semantic Net' proposed by Tim Berners-Lee (the 'father' of the Internet) as the next 'intelligent' Internet. Several methods such as Topic Maps, Concept Maps or Ontologies are available, differing in the degree of formalization. In general, they offer a systematic approach to knowledge representation and a controlled vocabulary set up by experts to describe the domain as well as visualization and search facilities to navigate the maps. In more formal cases such as ontologies, the domain may be 'understood' by machines to e.g. draw inferences or check consistency