Web of Needs : What Austria Needs

SAT research line “Web of Needs” under the project name “USS WON” (Usability, Scalability & Security for the “Web of Needs”) receives external funding until 2016: The Research Studio SAT (Smart Agent Technologies) of the RSA FG has fully convinced the evaluators of the funding programme of the BMVIT and BMWFJ with regard to content. Thus, more than three quarters of a million EURO are available for the research project “Web of Needs” until 2016.

What is the future of the World Wide Web?

The Internet | Web means infinite space. Hardly any access barriers for people who want to join in. Open standards. Enormous diversity. But is this what the Web of the future looks like? This question has been occupying the RSA studio SAT for a year. And its expertise is gaining more and more recognition. Most recently also by the Research Promotion Agency: “The SAT Studio is working on a significant expansion of what the Web is today”, says Prof. DDr. Peter A. Bruck, scientific director of the RSA FG. “It is about a completely different view on what is put on the Internet and what can be linked, searched and found on the Internet via the Web”, Bruck explains.

The focus is on needs “Up to now, offers, information and documents, products and services can be presented on the Web, but not yet the needs”, Florian Kleedorfer, project and operational manager at the SAT studio, explains the background of the research project “Web of Needs”. This is exactly where Studio SAT comes in: “The aim of the research project”, says the operative studio manager Christina Maria Busch,

“is to represent needs on the Web independently of the individual objects they may be aimed at. It can be said that we want to emancipate people in their needs.  Users must be able to express what they want. The rest is done by the technology we have developed”.

, explained Busch hinzu.

The magic word here is “semantics”:

“The basic idea here is not to see the Web as a large archive, but from the demand side. For this purpose we want to develop a description system and an open source community”.

, implied Research Studios Austria Chef Peter A. Bruck.

“In the end, what counts is what the market needs. And the fact that Austria needs and values the input of Austrian researchers for its prosperous development is shown by the current funding commitment. I thank Florian Kleedorfer and Christina Busch for their commitment and congratulate them on this recognition”.

, continued Bruck.