WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, WonderWeb WP3 Presentation Stefano Borgo, Carola Catenacci, Roberta Ferrario, Aldo Gangemi, Nicola Guarino, Jos Lehmann, Claudio Masolo, Alessandro Oltramari, Laure Vieu ISTC-CNR, Trento&Rome, Italy Peter Mika, Marta Sabou, Daniel Oberle Vrije Univ. Amsterdam, AIFB Pierre Grenon, Luc Schneider IFOMIS (Univ. of Leipzig), Univ. of Geneva

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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)

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, Ontology Quality: Precision and Coverage Low precision, max coverage Less good Good High precision, max coverage WORSE Low precision and coverage BAD Max precision, low coverage

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, I A (L) M D (L) I B (L) Why precision is important False agreement!

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, A quantitative metric for ontology quality Coverage = |I k  O k |/|I k | Precision = |I k  O k |/|O k | Accuracy = (|I k |-|A k |)/|I k | …The basis of a rigorous framework for evaluating, comparing, certifying ontologies wrt benchmark data

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, Ontology Design Patterns 1.ODPs are templates for modelling core domain notions 2.An ODP refines a fragment of a background FO 3.An ODP is axiomatized according to the fragment it refines 4.An ODP has an intuitive and compact visualization 5.ODPs can be specialized 6.ODPs must be intuitively exemplified 7.ODPs build on informal schemes used by domain experts, re-interpreted in the light of foundational notions 8.ODPs describe "best practice" of modelling 9.ODPs are similar to DB schemes, but with a more general character, independently from local design details (W3C task force just started)

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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.

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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 Choose Specificity Top Bank Law 4D 3D Single VisionSingle Module Formal Links Between Visions and Modules Mappings between Visions/Modules and Lexicons

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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 (D&S) linked to DOLCE. 1 specific domain: –web services – using DOLCE+D&S (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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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) DOLCE+D&S (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+

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, DOLCE a 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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, DOLCE’s basic taxonomy Endurant Physical Amount of matter Physical object Feature Non-Physical Mental object Social object … Perdurant Static State Process Dynamic Achievement Accomplishment Quality Physical Spatial location … Temporal Temporal location … Abstract Quality region Time region Space region Color region …

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, DOLCE extensions Top DOLCE-Lite Descriptions Extrinsic ModalitiesCommunication Time m.topology Funct. participation Places Plans WN alignmentBiomedical Domain #2 Legal Domain #1 Banking Domain #3 Services WordNet link to built-in representation ontologies

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, Application of DOLCE (1) WordNet alignment and OntoWordNet 809 synsets from WordNet1.6 directly subsumed by a DOLCE+D&S class –Whole WordNet linked to DOLCE+D&S –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

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, Applications of DOLCE (2) Core Ontologies based on DOLCE, D&S, 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)

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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 1.Missing semantics (not even explained in text) 2.Missing axiomatization (explained, but not formalized) 3.Loose design 4.Narrow scope (e.g. service views, real world services)

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, Interaction with other WPs Foundational ontologies implementation –Expressivity issues -> WP1 Remodelling of automatically created ontologies -> WP2 Role of versioning, modularization, merging, and collaborative development of foundational ontologies -> WP4 Possible extra work on tool for guided use of foundational distinctions in ontology building -> WP2 Ontology of component integration -> WP1

WonderWeb. Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web. IST nd Review Meeting, 11 March, 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 (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) -University of Queensland (Robert Colomb, Peter Eklund) -University of Torino, Dept. of Computer Science (Leonardo Lesmo) -University of Picardie Jules Verne, Paris (Gilles Kassel) -University of Geneva (Luc Schneider)