HDR of Salima Benbernou


Subject:
Semantic and Privacy Aware Methods for Data Access

Summary:

How to find relevant information (query answers) in a document, a database, or on the Web ? This is an issue which is extensively under investigation. Several methods and algorithms have been proposed. However, additional efforts are required in order to accommodate semantic aspects of data and queries. Our research mainly deals with the design of frameworks where semantics can be considered in the process of modeling, querying and controlling access to data. We investigated the data semantic issues to access different types of data and provide some reasoning services : ranking documents when comparing semantically their contents, semantic retrieval of multimedia content, mapping discovery in a peer to peer environment, semantic discovery of web services to automate composition of distributed process, semantic and sharing of personal business processes.Furthermore, when handling data in the area of service oriented computing, there is a large amount of personal data that are collected from clients/individuals, such as taxpayers, car owners, patients, benefit recipients, and processed by government and other public service providers. As the number of inappropriate usage and leakage of personal data is increasing, privacy concerns is becoming one of the most important concerns of service requesters, service providers and legislators. In this setting, we addressed the privacy issue in services interactions and a way to handle and control the private data usage.


Defense date: wednesday, november 26, 2008