Upper ontology

About: Upper ontology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9767 publications have been published within this topic receiving 220721 citations. The topic is also known as: top-level ontology & foundation ontology.

KC-Viz: A novel approach to visualizing and navigating ontologies

Abstract: There is empirical evidence that the user interaction metaphors used in ontology engineering toolkits are largely inadequate and that novel interactive frameworks for human ontology interaction are needed. Here we present a novel tool for visualizing and navigating ontologies, called KC Viz, which exploits an innovative ontology summarization method to support a ’middleout ontology browsing’ approach, where it becomes possible to navigate ontologies starting from the most information-rich nodes (i.e., key concepts). This approach is similar to map-based visualization and navigation in Geographical Information Systems, where, e.g., major cities are displayed more prominently than others, depending on the current level of granularity.

Representing the UMLS® Semantic Network using OWL: (Or what's in a Semantic Web link?)

Abstract: The Semantic Network, a component of the Unified Medical Language Systems (UMLS), describes core biomedical knowledge consisting of semantic types and relationships. It is a well established, semi-formal ontology in widespread use for over a decade. We expected to publish this ontology on the Semantic Web, using OWL, with relatively little effort. However, we ran into a number of problems concerning alternative interpretations of the SN notation and the inability to express some of the interpretations in OWL. We detail these problems, as a cautionary tale to others planning to publish pre-existing ontologies on the Semantic Web, as a list of issues to consider when describing formally concepts in any ontology, and as a collection of criteria for evaluating alternative representations, which could form part of a methodology of ontology development.

Collecting Community-Based Mappings in an Ontology Repository

Abstract: Several ontology repositories provide access to the growing collection of ontologies on the Semantic Web. Some repositories collect ontologies automatically by crawling the Web; in other repositories, users submit ontologies themselves. In addition to providing search across multiple ontologies, the added value of ontology repositories lies in the metadata that they may contain. This metadata may include information provided by ontology authors, such as ontologies' scope and intended use; feedback provided by users such as their experiences in using the ontologies or reviews of the content; and mapping metadata that relates concepts from different ontologies. In this paper, we focus on the ontology-mapping metadata and on community-based method to collect ontology mappings. More specifically, we develop a model for representing mappings collected from the user community and the metadata associated with the mapping. We use the model to bring together more than 30,000 mappings from 7 sources. We also validate the model by extending BioPortal---a repository of biomedical ontologies that we have developed--to enable users to create single concept-to-concept mappings in its graphical user interface, to upload and download mappings created with other tools, to comment on the mappings and to discuss them, and to visualize the mappings and the corresponding metadata.

Ontology Engineering with Ontology Design Patterns: Foundations and Applications

Abstract: The use of ontologies for data and knowledge organization has become ubiquitousin many dataintensive and knowledgedriven application areas, in science, industry,and the humanities. At the same time, ontology engineering best practices continueto evolve. In particular, modular ontology modeling based on ontology designpatterns is establishing itself as an approach for creating versatile and extendableontologies for data management and integration. This book is the very first comprehensive treatment of Ontology Engineering withOntology Design Patterns. It contains both advanced and introductory materialaccessible for readers with only a minimal background in ontology modeling. Someintroductory material is written in the style of tutorials, and specific chapters aredevoted to examples and to applications. Other chapters convey the state of the artin research regarding ontology design patterns. The editors and the contributing authors include the leading contributors to thedevelopment of ontologydesignpatterndriven ontology engineering.

Enriching ontology mappings with semantic relations

Abstract: There is a large number of tools to match or align corresponding concepts between ontologies. Most tools are restricted to equality correspondences, although many concepts may be related differently, e.g. according to an is-a or part-of relationship. Supporting such additional semantic correspondences can greatly improve the expressiveness of ontology mappings and their usefulness for tasks such as ontology merging and ontology evolution. We present a new approach called STROMA (SemanTic Refinement of Ontology MAppings) to determine semantic ontology mappings. In contrast to previous approaches, it follows a so-called enrichment strategy that refines the mappings determined with a state-of-the-art match tool. The enrichment strategy employs several techniques including the use of background knowledge and linguistic approaches to identify the additional kinds of correspondences. We evaluate the approach in detail using several real-life benchmark tests. A comparison with different tools for semantic ontology matching confirms the viability of the proposed enrichment strategy.