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realized that the BoK 1.0 might soon be replaced. We now consider current, ongoing
research on the BoK 2.0.
6
The Body of Knowledge 2.0: Current, Ongoing Research
Initiatives
In 2010 the US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a foundational proposal
from Sean Ahearn and his collaborators to begin developing the Body of Knowledge
2.0 [1]. The proposal began by stressing the importance of GIS&T to the US economy
and the role of BoK 1.0 in providing the first comprehensive ontology of the field. It
then continued by explaining that the BoK 2.0 would create a “transformational, dy-
namic environment for pedagogy, knowledge building, discourse, collaboration, and
research in GIS&T by leveraging persistent immersive synthetic environments (i.e.
Second Life, OpenSim etc.) ontological analysis, knowledge mining and visualization
approaches”.
These researchers proposed to resolve a number of issues when designing the
BoK 2.0, including: the limitations of BoK 1.0; whether to use a top-down or bot-
tom-up design or a hybrid; how best to visualize and navigate the knowledge do-
main; how to reconcile collaborative contributions from a virtual community with
authoritative expert knowledge; what technical and institutional mechanisms could
nurture the development; and whether a perpetual virtual environment be created
that would cater to different levels of expertise and to educational, research and
professional needs. Three workshops were envisaged: 1) for knowledge discovery
and design; 2) for visualization of the knowledge domain; and 3) to create the dy-
namic wikis and virtual collaborative environments. The final goal was to enable
“functioning virtual communities of students, teachers, practitioners, industry, and
researchers”.
Although research on BoK 2.0 is in its infancy more details may be found in a
presentation that Ahearn and his colleagues made at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
[2]. In this presentation the approach used in developing what they refer to as GIS&T
BoK 2 is beginning to come into clearer focus. The various foundational components
of the system will include a core ontology (BoKOnto). This will be managed,
accessed and comprehended, in part through visualization technologies (BoKVis).
Contributions to the store of knowledge will come through wiki like software envi-
ronments (BoKWiki). The knowledge contained within the system will be referred to
as a knowledge corpus which might include knowledge artifacts such as papers, pres-
entations, curricula, syllabi, texts, methodologies, algorithms. This level of detail will
thus address one of the primary criticisms of BoK 1.0, namely its lack of detail and
depth. The final component will be a reference system that allows the knowledge to
be addressed easily with agents similar to Apple iPhone's Siri technology or, more
attractively, with a visualized, 3D immersive environment akin to Second Life. This
will be developed as a persistent virtual environment, BoKPVE. These proposed
