Formal Ontology in Information Systems

Abstract:The Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) is an upper level ontology that has been proposed as a starter document for The Standard Upper Ontology Working Group, an IEEE-sanctioned working group of collaborators from the fields of engineering, philosophy, and information science. The SUMO provides definitions for general-purpose terms and acts as a foundation for more specific domain ontologies. In this paper we outline the strategy used to create the current version of the SUMO, discuss some of the challenges that we faced in constructing the ontology, and describe in detail its most general concepts and the relations between them.

Abstract:A critical problem for practical KR is dealing with relationships that change over time. This problem is compounded by representation languages such as OWL that are biased towards binary relations; even when the relationships that vary with time are binary, the time the relationship holds typically requires a third argument. We discuss the standard approach to this problem, and contrast it to a new alternative based on a four-dimensionalist (perdurantist) ontology, which allows us to use more of the expressive power of description logics. The technique is usable in other logics as well.

Abstract:Though the utility of domain Ontologies is now widely acknowledged in an increasing number of domains, several barriers must be overcome before Ontologies become practical and useful tools. A critical issue is the task of identifying, defining, and entering the concept definitions. In case of large and complex application domains this task can be lengthy, costly, and controversial (since different persons may have different points of view about the same concept). To reduce time, cost (and, sometimes, harsh discussions) it is highly advisable to refer, in constructing or updating an ontology, to the documents available in the field. In this paper we describe OntoLearn, a text-mining tool devised to improve human productivity during the process of ontology construction.