WonderWeb WP3 Presentation

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WonderWeb WP3Presentation

• Stefano Borgo, Carola Catenacci, Roberta
  Ferrario, Aldo Gangemi, Nicola Guarino, Jos
  Lehmann, Claudio Masolo, Alessandro Oltramari,
  Laure Vieu

ISTC-CNR, TrentoRome, Italy
Peter Mika, Marta Sabou, Daniel Oberle
Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, AIFB
Pierre Grenon, Luc Schneider IFOMIS (Univ. of
Leipzig), Univ. of Geneva
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WP3 tasks progress

• 3.1 State of the Art and Methodology
• Ontology Roadmap (D15)
• Formal framework for ontology quality
• Ontology design patterns
• Work progressing towards D16 (methodological
  guidelines)
• 3.2 Foundational Ontologies Library
• Library architecture
• First reference module DOLCE (D17)
• Re-modeling of an example ontology produced by
  OntoLift
• Final version of library, including alternative
  visions core domain ontologies (D18)
• Ontology of services (KAON integration, DAML/S
  alignment)

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Ontology Quality Precision and Coverage
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Why precision is important
MD(L)
IB(L)
False agreement!
IA(L)
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A quantitative metric forontology quality

• Coverage Ik?Ok/Ik
• Precision Ik?Ok/Ok
• Accuracy (Ik -Ak)/Ik

The basis of a rigorous framework for
evaluating, comparing, certifying ontologies wrt
benchmark data
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Foundational Ontologies

• Based on formal relations
• Carefully crafted taxonomic backbone (Minimal
  general categories)
• Explicit commitment on major ontological choices
• Clear branching points
• Pointers to established literature
• Link to natural language

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Role of foundational ontologies

• Emphasis on meaning explanation and negotiation
  (pre-processing time)
• Help recognizing and understanding disagreements
  as well as agreements
• Improve ontology development methodology
• Provide principled mechanism for trustable
  mappings among application ontologies and
  metadata standards
• Improve trust on the semantic web!
• Mutual understanding vs. mass interoperability

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Ontology Design Patterns
(W3C task force just started)

• ODPs are templates for modelling core domain
  notions
• An ODP refines a fragment of a background FO
• An ODP is axiomatized according to the fragment
  it refines
• An ODP has an intuitive and compact visualization
• ODPs can be specialized
• ODPs must be intuitively exemplified
• ODPs build on informal schemes used by domain
  experts, re-interpreted in the light of
  foundational notions
• ODPs describe "best practice" of modelling
• ODPs are similar to DB schemes, but with a more
  general character, independently from local
  design details

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The WonderWeb Foundational Ontologies Library
(WFOL)

• Reflects different commitments and purposes,
  rather than a single monolithic view.
• A starting point for building new foundational or
  specific ontologies.
• A reference point for easy and rigorous
  comparison among different ontological
  approaches.
• A common framework for analyzing, harmonizing and
  integrating existing ontologies and metadata
  standards.

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Structure of the WFOL

• Modules are organized along two dimensions
• visions, corresponding to basic ontological
  choices made
• specificity, corresponding to the levels of
  generality/specific domains

Choose Vision
Mappings between Visions/Modules and Lexicons
4D
3D
Top
Choose Specificity
Formal Links Between Visions and Modules
Bank
Law
Single Vision
Single Module
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Current Status of the WFOL

• 3 visions
• DOLCE
• OCHRE (originally developed by Luc Schneider)
• BFO (originally developed at the IFOMIS
  institute)
• 1 specialization
• theory of Descriptions and Situations (DS)
  linked to DOLCE.
• 1 specific domain
• web services using DOLCEDS (in cooperation
  with Daniel, Marta and Peter)
• 1 mapping between different visions
• OCHRE to DOLCE
• 1 mapping between ontology modules and lexicons
• DOLCE to WordNet

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Current Implementation of the WFOL

• Axiomatic (FOL) characterization of the three
  visions (DOLCE, OCHRE, and BFO).
• KIF encoding of DOLCE and OCHRE.
• OWL encoding of (a part of) DOLCE (DOLCE-Lite).
• OWL/KIF encoding of (a part of) DOLCEDS
  (DOLCE-Lite).
• OWL/KIF encoding of the web services ontology.
• Formal mapping of OCHRE into DOLCE.
• WordNet-DOLCE alignment (in KIF).
• core ontologies extending DOLCE-Lite (time,
  plans, services, legal, finance, )
• forthcoming OCML version of DOLCE-Lite

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Some Ontological Choices

• Concepts vs. individuals
• Individual qualities
• Ways of persistence in time
• Nature of Space and Time
• Localization in space-time
• Nature of social entities

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DOLCEa Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and
Cognitive Engineering

• Strong cognitive bias descriptive (as opposite
  to prescriptive) attitude
• Emphasis on cognitive invariants
• Categories as conceptual containers no deep
  metaphysical implications wrt true reality
• Clear branching points to allow easy comparison
  with different ontological options
• Rich axiomatization
• 37 basic categories
• 7 basic relations
• 80 axioms, 100 definitions, 20 theorems

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DOLCEs basic taxonomy
Endurant Physical Amount of matter Physical
object Feature Non-Physical Mental
object Social object Perdurant Static Stat
e Process Dynamic Achievement Accomplishmen
t
Quality Physical Spatial location Temporal
Temporal location Abstract Abstract Quali
ty region Time region Space region Color
region
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DOLCE extensions
link to built-in representation ontologies
Top
DOLCE-Lite
Descriptions
Extrinsic
Time m.topology
Modalities
Communication
Places
Funct. participation
Plans
Legal Domain 1
WN alignment
Biomedical Domain 2
Services
Banking Domain 3
WordNet
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Application of DOLCE (1)WordNet alignment and
OntoWordNet

• 809 synsets from WordNet1.6 directly subsumed by
  a DOLCEDS class
• Whole WordNet linked to DOLCEDS
• Lower taxonomy levels in WordNet still need
  revision
• Glosses being transformed into DOLCE axioms
• Machine learning applied jointly with
  foundational ontology
• WordNet domains being used to create a modular,
  general purpose domain ontology

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Applications of DOLCE (2)Core Ontologies based
on DOLCE, DS, and OntoWordNet

• Core ontology of plans and guidelines
• Core ontology of (Web) services
• Core ontology of service-level agreements
• Core ontology of (bank) transactions
  (anti-money-laundering)
• Core ontology for the Italian legal lexicon
• Core ontology of regulatory compliance
• Core ontology of fishery (FAO's Agriculture
  Ontology Service)
• Core ontology of biomedical terminologies (cf.
  UMLS)

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Alignment of Service Ontologies

• Web Services are central to the Semantic Web
  architecture
• More general problem of service methodology
• Diverse standards, developed by heterogeneous
  communities
• DAML/OWL-S, W3C-WSA, ISO quality, Workflow
  community
• Semantics must be enhanced
• Confusion around definitions a problem for
  humans
• Poor axiomatization a problem for machines
• Problematic issues in DAML-S
• Missing semantics (not even explained in text)
• Missing axiomatization (explained, but not
  formalized)
• Loose design
• Narrow scope (e.g. service views, real world
  services)

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Interaction with other WPs

• Foundational ontologies implementation
• Expressivity issues -gt WP1
• Remodelling of automatically created ontologies
  -gt WP2
• Role of versioning, modularization, merging, and
  collaborative development of foundational
  ontologies -gt WP4
• Possible extra work on tool for guided use of
  foundational distinctions in ontology building -gt
  WP2
• Ontology of component integration -gt WP1

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DOLCE acceptance

• - Berlin-Brandeburgische Akademie der
  Wissenshaften (Christiane Fellbaum)
• - BioImage Database Development, Dept. of
  Zoology, University of Oxford, UK (Chris Catton)
• - CIDOC-CRM, ISO/CD 21127 (Martin Doerr)
• - IEEE Standard Upper Ontology initiative
• - W3C Semantic-Web Best Practices and Deployment
  (SWBPD) Working Group
• - ELSAG SpA, Roma (Giovanni Siracusa)
• - UN/FAO Agricultural Ontology Service (Johannes
  Keizer)
• - IBM Software Group Rome Lab (Guido Vetere)
• IBM Watson Research Center (Chris Welty)
• University of Leeds, Dept. of Computer Science
  (Tony Cohn)
• - University of Leipzig, Institute for Formal
  Ontology and Medical Information Systems (Barry
  Smith)
• - University of Leipzig, Dept. of Computer
  Science (Heinrich Herre)
• - Institute of Legal Information Theory and
  Technologies, CNR, Pisa
• - Language and Computing, Belgium (Werner
  Ceusters)
• - Nomos SpA, Milano (Massimo Soroldoni)
• - Ontology Works (Bill Andersen)
• - Selesta SpA, Roma
• - University of Amsterdam (Joost Breuker)
• - University of Bremen (John Bateman, Christian
  Freksa)