Distributed knowledge-based parsing for document analysis and understanding

Document Analysis and Understanding (DAU) is a complex AI application with high industrial impact. For the increasing demands upon the bandwidth and quality of the analysis it is crucial to enable different analysis modules to collaborate. For making collaboration possible, we first examine the question whether there exists a common ontological basis which can serve as a platform for communication of different DAU modules. Once communication is enabled, we investigate the second question, how DAU modules originally designed as stand-alone systems must be modified in order to benefit from collaboration with others.