Agent-Based Interface to Terrestrial Ecological Forecasting

+ Visit the TOPS site

This project builds upon the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) architecture to provide an agent-based interface for ecological forecasting.

A software agent is sophisticated computer program to which a person can delegate tasks. We often delegate tasks to humans, such as insurance agents, travel agents, or personal assistants. In limited domains, we have developed the technology that enables people to delegate certain tasks to computers. In the case of data management, access, and display, IMAGEbot coupled with a natural language interface (NLI), constitutes such an agent, where a person can issue a high-level, potentially ambiguous request in English and expect the program to figure out how to satisfy the request using the available resources, such as SQL [32] queries, ecological models and image-processing operations.

• Keith Golden, PI, NASA/ARC
• Ramakrishna Nemani, PI, NASA/ARC
• Petr Votava, co-PI, California State University Monterey Bay
• Forrest Melton, co-PI, California State University Monterey Bay
• Oren Etzion, co-PI, University of Washington