19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Scientific Informatics Challenges
in
Basic Problems of Scientific Data Resources Development and Utilization in Poland
Juliusz L. Kulikowski
Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw, Poland
Development of scientific data bases in Poland has a relatively long tradition.
Poland became an active CODATA member since the very beginning of its organization.
Simultaneously, in the early 70ths of the past century attempts to creation
of a modern national scientific information system based on the resources of
libraries, archives and other types of scientific information centers were made.
In those times the problem was considered not only as a practical one but also
as an important and interesting basic problem of a large system design with
various technological, organizational, legal, economical and other aspects.
Dramatic development of computer and telecommunication systems technology in
the late years of the 20th century influenced on the concepts of scientific
information systems as well. In addition, new political and economical circumstances
in Poland forced a new approach to the scientific information services organization
in the country. Actually, we have a system half-sponsored by the government,
but also subjected to the open market rules. This also has an influence on the
strategy of scientific resources collection by autonomous scientific organizations.
This is why an idea of considering the national scientific information system
development as a sort of multi-person game rather than as a process controlled
by center.
On the other hand, there is a big interest to the problems of scientific data resources exploitation by the users. At least, two basic aspects of these problems should be mentioned: 10 is the one of effective information retrieval in distributed databases, 20 is this of rational decision making on the basis of uncertain. limited, or superfluous information. Concerning the first aspect, several scientific centers in Poland are involved in the investigation and design of multi-agent systems, application of negotiations methods to information retrieval in distributed data bases and in data mining methods. The second aspect of scientific data resources exploitation attracted the attention of other groups of specialists. Poland has a long tradition in modern logics and in theoretical backgrounds of computer science development. That is why a large number of specialists pay attention to the methods of decision making based on various approaches, like fuzzy sets, rough sets, Bayesian networks, non-classical logic, etc. The methods are actively developed in the country, sometimes in a strong cooperation with foreign scientists.
In the presentation selected
examples of the above-mentioned problems and reached results will be given.