Semantic Grid for Rural Policy Development and Appraisal (PolicyGrid)

Semantic Grid for Rural Policy Development and Appraisal (PolicyGrid)

PolicyGrid is a research Node of the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). NCeSS is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate how innovative and powerful computer-based infrastructure and tools developed over the past five years under the UK e-Science programme can benefit the social science research community. PolicyGrid involves a collaboration between computer scientists and social scientists at the University of Aberdeen, the Macaulay Institute (Aberdeen) and elsewhere in the UK.

The project aims to support policy-related research activities within social science by developing appropriate Grid middleware tools which meet the requirements of social science practitioners. The vision of the Semantic Grid is central to the PolicyGrid research agenda.

The first stage of PolicyGrid developed novel interfaces using NLG to allow researchers to interact with a digital repository. The project is now extending this work to produce a general “NLG service” working on semantic web data whose behaviour can be influenced by “policies” incorporating user preferences and imposed constraints from the environment and context of use.

 

Contact: Pete Edwards