Brian Lam - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Brian Lam

The use of information technology forms an integral part of primary and secondary education in ma... more The use of information technology forms an integral part of primary and secondary education in many different parts of the world. In the past decade, as the price of software and hardware has become more affordable, there is an increasing interest in applying various communication technologies to support collaborative learning. The introduction of Video-Conferencing Learning Environment (VCLE) is a good example of applying communication technologies to support interactive distance education. This article reports on the experience of developing video-conferencing based education between some schools in Hong Kong and some schools in China. It also discusses some of its technical and pedagogical implications in implementing video-conferencing based education.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

We present the design and implementation of SPINdle-an open source Java based defeasible logic re... more We present the design and implementation of SPINdle-an open source Java based defeasible logic reasoner capable to perform efficient and scalable reasoning on defeasible logic theories (including theories with over 1 million rules). The implementation covers both the standard and modal extensions to defeasible logics. It can be used as a standalone theory prover and can be embedded into any applications as a defeasible logic rule engine. It allows users or agents to issues queries, on a given knowledge base or a theory generated on the fly by other applications, and automatically produces the conclusions of its consequences. The theory can also be represented using XML.

Knowledge and Information Systems, 2018

Literature on business process compliance (BPC) has predominantly focused on the alignment of the... more Literature on business process compliance (BPC) has predominantly focused on the alignment of the regulatory rules with the design, verification and validation of business processes. Previously surveys on BPC have been conducted with specific context in mind; however, the literature on BPC management research is largely sparse and does not accumulate a detailed understanding on existing literature and related issues faced by the domain. This survey provides a holistic view of the literature on existing BPC management approaches, and categories them based on different compliance management strategies in the context of formulated research questions. A systematic literature approach is used where search terms pertaining keywords were used to identify literature related to the research questions from scholarly databases. From initially 183 papers, we selected 79 papers related to the themes of this survey published between 2000-2015. The survey results reveal that mostly compliance management approaches center around three distinct categories namely: design-time (28%), run-time (32%) and auditing (10%). Also, organisational and internal control based compliance management frameworks (21%) and hybrid approaches make (9%) of the surveyed approaches. Furthermore, open research challenges and gaps are identified and discussed with respect to the compliance problem.

This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or wri... more This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis. I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award. I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the General Award Rules of The University of Queensland, immediately made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material. Statement of Contributions to Jointly Authored Works Contained in the Thesis This thesis contains the following joint works: • [145]. I was responsible for the system design, implementation and drafting the paper. Statement of Contributions by Others to the Thesis as a Whole No contributions by others.

In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to dat... more In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to datasets but also to vocabularies. However, even less support is provided for taking the licenses of vocabularies into account than for datasets, which says it all. In particular, this paper addresses the following issue: checking the compatibility among the set of licenses assigned to the vocabularies used to constitute a dataset, and the license that is intended to be associated to the dataset itself. We provide a framework called LIVE able to support data publishers in such compatibility checking step, taking into consideration both the licenses associated to the vocabularies and those assigned to the data.

2012 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, 2012

Adaptation decisions made by context-aware applications on behalf of users are based on evaluatio... more Adaptation decisions made by context-aware applications on behalf of users are based on evaluations of current context and preferences of users. This context information is imperfect by nature and can cause applications to behave in ways that users do not expect. Applications that exhibit unwanted behaviour will negatively impact their usability and violate the trust users have in them. Intelligibility and control in applications can help users to understand why they decided to behave in certain ways, and to forgive the applications by enabling users to override the undesirable adaptation. This paper presents a non-monotonic rule based approach (defeasible logic) for modelling user preferences, which serves as the basis of decision-making of application adaptations. It facilitates automatic generation of explanations regarding reasoning of defeasible preferences. The model also supports creation of feedback mechanisms for nontechnical users to formulate their own preferences independently, and modify the adaptation decision process to control application behaviours. Moreover, to demonstrate its applicability we have designed a set of evolvable situations and a context model, which complement the defeasible preferences for building smart home applications to enhance health care of the elderly.

Journal of Logic and Computation, 2012

This paper shows how a non-monotonic rule based system (defeasible logic) can be integrated with ... more This paper shows how a non-monotonic rule based system (defeasible logic) can be integrated with numerical computation engines, and how this can be applied to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). To this end, we have simulated a physical system from which we can obtain numerical information. The physical system perceives information from its environment and generates predicates that can be reasoned by a defeasible logic engine. The conclusions/decisions derived will then realized by the physical system as it takes actions based on the conclusion derived. Here we consider a scenario where a "flock" of UAVs have to navigate within an urban canyon environment. The UAVs are self-autonomous without centralized control. The goal of the UAVs is to navigate to their desired destinations without colliding with each other. In case of possible collision, the UAVs concerned will communicate with each other and use their background knowledge or travel guidelines to resolve the conflicts.

In this paper we describe a narrative of a civic resistance movement to defeat the Italian Mafia,... more In this paper we describe a narrative of a civic resistance movement to defeat the Italian Mafia, a model comparing strategic and normative modes of reasoning in an individual and collective interp ...

The Web of Data is assisting to a growth of interest with respect to the open challenge of repres... more The Web of Data is assisting to a growth of interest with respect to the open challenge of representing and reasoning in an automated way over licenses and copyright. In this paper, we deal with the problem of checking the compatibility of a set of licenses associated to a single query result returned on the Web of Data, and subsequently compose them into a so called composite license. More precisely, we analyze two composition heuristics, AND-composition and OR-composition, showing how they can be used to combine the deontic components specified by the licenses, i.e., permissions, obligations, and prohibitions, and which are the most suitable combinations depending on the starting licenses. Such heuristics are evaluated using the SPINdle logic reasoner.

... Ho-Pun Lam1,2, Subhasis Thakur1,3, Guido Governatori1 and Abdul Sattar1,3 ... cycle (see belo... more ... Ho-Pun Lam1,2, Subhasis Thakur1,3, Guido Governatori1 and Abdul Sattar1,3 ... cycle (see below for details), the application engine will issue request to the GPS monitor on the current traffic situation and information of the UAVs nearby; and if, on the other hand, an accident has ...

Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference. F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle, eds. Washington, USA, May 1, 2008

Emergency management is by its nature, and in some jurisdictions by its definition, an activity t... more Emergency management is by its nature, and in some jurisdictions by its definition, an activity that requires a concerted effort by a number of governmental and non-governmental agencies. There is a growing appreciation that collaboration between these parties is best served through the use of interoperable standards for message formats for purposes such as alerting and resource exchange. However, it is also important to realize that, although much advantage can be drawn from standardizing certain aspects of ...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

Speculative Computation is an effective means for solving problems with incomplete information in... more Speculative Computation is an effective means for solving problems with incomplete information in an open and distributed environment, such as peer-to-peer environment. It allows such a system to compute tentative (and possibly final) solutions using default knowledge about the current environment, or the agent's perception, even if the communications between peers are delayed or broken. However, previous work in speculative reasoning assumed that agents are hierarchically structured, which may not be the case in reality. We propose a more general multi-agents system with no centralized control. Agents in the framework have equivalent functionalities and can collaborate with each other to achieve their common goals. We characterize the framework using the argumentation semantics of defeasible logic, which provides support of speculative reasoning in the presence of conflicting information. We provide an operational model for the framework and present a prototype implementation of the model.

Dung-like argumentation framework ASPIC and Defeasible Logic (DL) are both well-studied rule-base... more Dung-like argumentation framework ASPIC and Defeasible Logic (DL) are both well-studied rule-based formalisms for defeasible reasoning.We compare the two frameworks and establish a linkage between an instantiation of ASPIC and a DL variant, which leads to a better understanding and cross-fertilization – in particular our work sheds light on features such as ambiguity propagating/blocking, team defeat and strict rules for argumentation, while emphasizing the argumentation-theoretic

Associating a license to data is a fundamental task when publishing data on the Web. However, in ... more Associating a license to data is a fundamental task when publishing data on the Web. However, in many cases data producers and publishers are not legal experts, and they usually have only a basic knowledge about the possible constraints they want to ensure concerning the use and reuse of their data. In this paper, we propose a framework called Licentia that offers to the data producers and publishers a suite of services to deal with licensing information. In particular, Licentia supports, through a user-friendly interface, the users in selecting the license that better suits their needs, starting from the set of constraints proposed to regulate the terms of use and reuse of the data.

In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to dat... more In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to datasets but also to vocabularies. However, even less support is provided for taking the licenses of vocabularies into account than for datasets, which says it all. In this paper, we present a framework called LIVE able to support data publishers in verifying licenses compatibility, taking into account both the licenses associated to the vocabularies and those assigned to the data built using such vocabularies.

In this paper we present the well founded variants of ambiguity blocking and ambiguity propagatin... more In this paper we present the well founded variants of ambiguity blocking and ambiguity propagating defeasible logics. We also show how to extend SPINdle, a state of the art, defeasible logic implementation to handle all such variants of defeasible logic.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

Knowledge and Information Systems, 2018

2012 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, 2012

Journal of Logic and Computation, 2012

Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference. F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle, eds. Washington, USA, May 1, 2008

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to dat... more In the Web of Data, licenses specifying the terms of use and reuse are associated not only to datasets but also to vocabularies. However, even less support is provided for taking the licenses of vocabularies into account than for datasets, which says it all. In this paper, we present a framework called LIVE able to support data publishers in verifying licenses compatibility, taking into account both the licenses associated to the vocabularies and those assigned to the data built using such vocabularies.