About Amine Platform
by
Adil KABBAJ
INSEA, Rabat, Morocco
Amine Group is composed actually of its founder, Pr. Adil Kabbaj, and of its permanent
member: Pr. Karim Bouzoubaa.
You can communicate with Amine Group by sending an
email to administrator
of Amine.
Founder
Pr. Adil Kabbaj is the founder and the main actor in the design and implementation of Amine Platform. His M. Sc. (1985-1987, Laval University, Quebec) and Ph. D. (1992-1996, Montreal University, Quebec) constitute the basis of Amine Platform: the main components of Amine, i.e. CG operations, CG LF parser, Prolog+CG, Synergy and dynamic formation of a knowledge base have been developed in Adil's M. Sc. and Ph.D. thesis. Adil has been improving these components since 1996.
Permanent Members
1.
Pr. Karim Bouzoubaa
decided to work with Adil on Amine Platform in April
2003. Adil and Karim formed the Amine Group. Karim
developed the first web site of Amine and participated in the preparation of
the release of the first version. He worked on the Java implementation of
dynamic ontology engine and on other aspects of the platform. He is responsible
for the multi-agent module of Amine Platform. His research interests are
multi-agent systems and Question Answering Systems.
Participants (students)
Karim Mankar Bennis and Youssef Ghaouta,
students from INSEA, are the designer of the first page of Amine web site 2
(December 2003)
Ontologies presented in SAMPLES have been developed by
several students from INSEA:
buildDictionaryOntology : An ontology developed from
"MY FIRST INCREDIBLE AMAZING DICTIONARY", by DANGUIR Abdessamad, AZWAOU Med and MANSOUR Taha
(December 2003),
buildKMOntology : An ontology developed from an
example proposed in Knowledge Machine Manual, by Elalami Sanae and Chiadmi Fadwa (December 2003),
buildPathologieAviaireOntology : An ontology developed from a
CD on poultry Pathology, by
SLIM Badreddine (December 2003).
Khalil
Ferhat, student from INSEA, worked in summer'04 on graph edition and graph drawing,
Said
Ladib, student from INSEA, worked in summer'04 on the
integration of Synergy in Amine
Platform
El Hachemi Khalid, student
from INSEA,
worked in summer'04 on the definition, implementation and use of two processes
related to Ontology: Question/Answering
and Composition of Concept Description.
Kaoutar ElHari,
worked on the multi-agents systems layer of Amine platform in the context of
her DESA degree. See MAS Layer for more detail (2006).
Nabil Ourdani, former
student from INSEA,
worked on ontology graphic editor. See Ontology GUI for
more detail (2005).
Rida Benhammane, former student from INSEA, developed the game TIJARI
using Prolog+CG (2005).
Meryem Hajjam and Farah Saidi, former students
from INSEA,
developed a micro-version of OCCAM using Amine Platform (2007).
Karim Bouzoubaa and his
Ph.D. student Lahcen Abounnour have produced an Amine Ontology version of Arabic WordNet (2008). This ontology is stored in
"samples/ontology/AWNOntology.xml" in AminePlatform.
In their DESA, Abdelhamid
Tamouh and Ayoub Mniai developed the mapping OWL - Amine Ontology for the
case of taxonomic ontology (2009).
Ph.D.
works
In his Ph.D., Mohammed Nasri
worked on the integration of a natural language processing (NLP) module into
Amine: a) an integration of ACE into Amine, b) the development of arabic NLP (2012-2016).
In Her Ph.D., Hind Lamharhar
used Amine in “A Semantic Meta-Modelling Approach for
Smart Government” (2016)
Master work
In her Master, Naoual Smaili
extended Amine to include Ontology Merging (2021-2022)
Collaborators
1.
In the
context of Flexnet project (development of flexible on-line courses), Pr. Peter Ohrstrom and his team from Human Informatics in Aalborg
University, Denmark, have developed an online
course on Conceptual Graph Theory and Prolog+CG.
During a three-day workshop (23 to 25 March 2004, in Aalborg), Adil presented Amine to this group. As a result of this
workshop, the group planed to develop online courses
on Amine Platform. Henrik Scharfe, an active member
of this team, used Prolog+CG in his master thesis and
in his Ph.D. thesis. He is also interested in the use of Amine platform.
2.
A
collaboration between Amine Group and the team of Pr. Dalila Chiadmi
and Pr. Ounsa Roudies
(from EMI, Rabat) has been established.
3.
Adil
and a team of students headed by Pr. Bernard Moulin
from Laval University explored a collaborative research agenda on the use and
improvement of Prolog+CG in 2001.
4.
Daniel Pun,
a Ph. D. candidate from CSU, Australia, is using Amine Platform for the
construction and manipulation of his ontology.
Amine Platform results from more than 20 years of
extensive research done by Pr. Adil Kabbaj concerning several threads in Conceptual Graphs
Theory. A brief history of this work will put Amine Platform in its proper
context.
In his master thesis (1985-1987), Adil
was interested in the design and implementation of a CG manipulation system:
implementation of type hierarchy and their operations as well as CG and
Conceptual Structures with their operations (maximal join, generalize, project,
contract, expand). Both simple and compound CG with coreferents
were considered. CG operations were not defined in terms of John Sowa formation
rules but as a specialization of a generic matching operation. Amine Platform
is indebt to this pragmatic and algorithmic approach
of CG operations definition and implementation.
Between 1987 and 1992, Adil
began to explore several aspects related to CG theory: extension of Prolog to
support CG, dynamic formation of CG knowledge base and development of an
interpreter for data flow graphs. During that period, Karim Bouzoubaa,
who was a Bachelor Student at INSEA, explored
some aspects of the generalization-based memory model developed by Adil.
In his Ph. D. (1992-1996), Adil
developed these aspects as well as CG editors and notations (especially graphic
and linear forms editors). Four products resulted from this work : a package of CG operations, Prolog++ (renamed Prolog+CG later) which is a CG extension of Prolog, Synergy
which is a visual CG activation based language, and a dynamic memory formation
engine. Between 1996 and 2001, Adil continued to
develop these products. During the fall-spring of 2001, Adil
gave a course at Laval University on Prolog+CG and
had many discussions with Pr. Bernard Moulin and his students. The idea and
need of a modular platform that integrates all the modules developed by Adil and that provides a multi-level architecture with
basic APIs has become more and more insistent since that time. Meanwhile,
ontology topic became more and more central in artificial intelligence and in
the CG community. It becomes clear that a modular CG platform should integrate
ontology at the kernel level. Amine Platform fulfils this recommandation
since its kernel concerns the creation, consultation, update, and use of
multi-lingua ontology.
Acknowledgement (by A. Kabbaj)
Acknowledgment is a web of thanks to many people,
directly or indirectly involved in this project. I apologize for all who are
not mentioned in this section but should be !
Thanks to my parents who helped and supported me
during all the years, always ready to give and ask for nothing. They supported
my travel to Canada for my bachelor (1982-1985) and my master (1985-1987)
studies at Laval University, Quebec, Canada.
Special thanks to Pr Bernard
Moulin who was my master thesis supervisor. He gave to me John Sowa’s first
book (1984) and proposed to me to develop and implement a Conceptual Graph
Manipulation System. At that time, I discovered John Sowa and his encyclopedic
mind. Since then, John and his work has never left my mind. Special thanks to
John for his work and his kindness (he accepted to be a member of my Ph. D.
thesis jury in 1996).
Special thanks to Pr Claude Frasson who was my Ph. D. supervisor at the University of
Montreal (1992-1996) and let me free to work on several aspects of Conceptual
Graph Theory.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Aalborg
group (Peter Ohrstrom, Henrik Scharfe,
Ulrik Petersen, and Jorgen Albretsen):
the current version of Amine gained insight from the invaluable discussion we
had on Amine during the workshop (23 to 25 March 2004, Aalborg, Danish).
Great thanks to my family; my wife Hafida
and my three sons: Hamza, Amine (who died physically but is still
present in our hearts) and Youssef, and to my Daughter Meriem, for their unlimited support, love and
patience. Thanks also to my big family for their love.
-
Nasri M., Intégration d’une composante pour le traitement du
langage naturel dans une plateforme pour les systèmes intelligents, Ph.D. thesis, 2016.
-
Lamharhar
H., I. Zaoui, A. Kabbaj, D.
Chiadmi, A Semantic
Meta-Modelling Approach for Smart Government: Service Discovery Based on
Conceptual Structures, International Journal of Conceptual Structures and Smart
Applications, 4:2, 2016.
-
Lamharhar H., Services web sémantiques pour
e-gouvernement « Cas d’étude e-Douane », Ph. D. thesis,
2016.
-
Lamharhar H., D. Chiadmi
and L. Benhlima, Ontology-based
knowledge representation
for e-Government domain, Conference iiWAS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference
on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services, Article No.:
51 Pages 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1145/2837185.2837203,
2015.
-
Lamharhar
H., Adil Kabbaj, Dalila Chiadmi, Laila Benhlima: An
e-government knowledge model: 'e-customs' case study. Electronic
Government, an International Journal, Volume 11(1/2):
59-82, 2014
-
Abouenour
L., M.Nasri, K. Bouzoubaa,
A. Kabbaj, et P. Rosso "Construction of an ontology for intelligent
Arabic QA systems leveraging the Conceptual Graphs representation” Journal of
Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems. 2014
-
Nasri
M., L. Abouenour, A. Kabbaj,
K. Bouzoubaa “Toward a semantic analyzer for Arabic
language”, IBIMA. 2014
-
Nasri
M., A. Kabbaj, K. Bouzoubaa,
Integration of a controlled natural language in an intelligent systems
platform, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, October
2013 -- Vol. 56. No. 2 – 2013
-
Nasri
M., A. Kabbaj, K. Bouzoubaa,
"Integration of the controlled language ACE to Amine Platform", in
Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge, Proc. of the 19th
International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Springer, Derby, England,
pp. 159-172, July, 2011.
-
Nasri M., A. Kabbaj, K. Bouzoubaa, "Langage naturel et représentation de
connaissances dans les systèmes intelligents", Proc. of the 4th Workshop
on Information Technologies and Communication, ENSEM, Casablanca, Morocco, October, 2011.
-
Kabbaj
A., S. Polovina, I. Landeurs,
“Interoperability through Standard CGIF notation: The case of Amine platform”,
in CSTIW’ 2009, Russia, 2009.
- Kabbaj A., An Overview
of Amine, in P. Hitzler and H. Schärfe (Eds), Conceptual
Structures in Practice, Chapman & Hall / CRC, pp. 321-348, 2009.
- Kabbaj A., Interoperability:
The next steps for Amine platform, in Proc. of the Second Conceptual Structures
Tool Interoperability Workshop (CS-TIW 2007), Sheffield, UK, Juley 2007.
- Kabbaj A., Development of
Intelligent Systems and Multi-Agents Systems with Amine Platform, in 15th Int.
Conf. on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'2006, Springer-Verlag, 2006.
- Kabbaj A., K. Bouzoubaa, K. ElHachimi and N. Ourdani, Ontology in Amine Platform: Structures and
Processes, in the 14th Proc. Int. Conf. Conceptual Structures,
ICCS 2006, Aalborg, Denmark, 2006.
- Kabbaj A., Moulin B., An algorithmic definition of CG operations
based on a bootstrap step, in Proc.
Of the International Conference on Conceptual structures ICCS, San Francisco, August, 2001.
- Kabbaj A. and al., Uses, Improvements and Extensions of Prolog+CG: Case studies,
in Proc. Of the International Conference on Conceptual structures ICCS, San
Francisco, August, 2001.
- Bouzouba K., Moulin B., Kabbaj A., CG-KQML+: An Agent Communication Language and its
use in a Multi-Agent System, in Proc.
Of the International Conference on Conceptual structures ICCS, San Francisco, August, 2001.
- Kabbaj A. et M. Janta, From PROLOG++ to PROLOG+CG :
an object-oriented logic programming, in Proc. Of the International
Conference on Conceptual Structures ICCS'2000, Darmstadt, Allemagne,
Août, 2000.
- Kabbaj A., Synergy: a conceptual graph activation-based
language, in Proc. Of the 7th International Conference on
Conceptual Structures ICCS'99, 1999.
- Kabbaj A., Synergy as an Hybrid
Object-Oriented Conceptual Graph Language, in Proc. Of the 7th
International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS’99), Springer-Verlag, 1999.
- Kabbaj A., H. Erramli and K. Mousaid, An integration-based approach to dynamic formation of a knowledge-base: The method and its applications, submitted to the 7th Int. Conf. on Conceptual Structures (ICCS'99), 1999.
-
Kabbaj A., Un système multi-paradigme pour la manipulation des connaissances
utilisant la théorie des graphes conceptuels, Ph. D. Thesis,
Univ. De Montreal, Canada, 1996.
- Kabbaj A., Self-Organizing
Knowledge Bases: The Integration Based Approach, in the Proc. Of the Int.
KRUSE Symposium: Knowledge Retrieval, Use, and Storage for Efficiency, Santa
Cruz, CA, USA, p. 64-68, 1995.
- Moulin B. and A. Kabbaj
(1990), SMGC : a tool for conceptual graphs processing, In The Journal
for the integrated study of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and
applied epistemology, 7:1.
-
Kabbaj A., SMGC : un système de manipulation des graphes conceptuels, M.
Sc. Thesis, Univ. Laval, Canada, 1987.