School of Computing FACULTY OF ENGINEERING Developing a methodology for building small scale domain ontologies: HISO case study Ilaria Corda PhD student School of Computing University of Leeds

Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary Research Problem: Current methods and methodologies are not appropriate for small scale domain ontologies Research questions: Which methodological principles can be followed for developing a History of Science ontology (HISO)? How should a methodology be scaled to be suitable for a small domain ontology? What degree of involvement should the domain expert have? Our goal is: To re-use and deploy relevant elements and aspects of existing methods and methodologies for building a small scale domain ontology

Some terminology [IEEE,1990; IEEE 1995] Methodology: “comprehensive, integrated series of techniques creating a general systems theory of how class of thought-intensive work ought be performed” Methods: “orderly process or procedure used in engineering of a product or performing a service” Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

METHONTOLOGY (based on the IEEE ) -Chemical & Crystalline Elements, Environmental pollutants ontology Gruninger & Fox’s Methodology -TOVE Toronto Virtual Enterprise project (Enterprise Design methodology, Project ontology, scheduling ontology) Uschold & King’s Method -Enterprise modelling process ontology Ordnance Survey’s Methodology (Kanga) -Hydrology ontology (active involvement of domain experts) Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

METHONTOLOGY [Fernandez-Lopez et al.; 99] Ontology specification activity: -Purpose -Scope -Granularity -Sources used (e.g. interviews with experts) Knowledge acquisition: -Meetings with experts looking at coarse grained knowledge -In-depth study of the documentation -Top down knowledge elicitation (from general to specific) Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Conceptualization: it converts informal views of the domain into semi-formal specifications (aka intermediate representations) -Building glossary of terms (e.g. concepts, instances) -Constructing concept classification trees -Defining binary relations diagrams -Describing axioms & rules Evaluation & Implementation Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Gruninger and Fox [Gruninger &Fox, 95] Identifying a Motivating scenario: to define the scope Defining (Informal) Competency Questions: NL questions expressing the requirements (throughout the whole ontology development) Expressing Competency Questions & Specifying Axioms in FOL Achieving formulation of completeness for CQ Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Ordnance Survey methodology(Kanga) [Kovacs et. al; 06] Identifying scope, purpose & requirement of the ontology; Gathering source knowledge and relevant documents (books, articles, dictionaries, web resources); Building and populating a glossary of terms; Converting knowledge contained in the glossary into structured English sentences; Evaluation and documentation. Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Uschold and King [Uschold & King; 95] Identifying the scope Identifying a range of intended users (audience) Building the ontology Identifying the acquiring the domain knowledge (capture) Expressing concepts & relations in a formal language (coding) Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Coding consists of 3 main tasks: committing to the vocabulary; choosing a formal language to express concepts and their relations; programming. Reusing existing ontologies (integrating) Evaluating the ontology Documenting the ontology (for knowledge sharing) Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Stages of ontology construction (HISO):  Pre-conceptualization defining scope and purpose  Conceptualization identifying concepts and relations, adding time and event descriptions  Logical representation and coding adding axioms, implementing inference rules for query answering Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Pre-conceptualization (mostly domain expert) : Providing a high level description of the domain and its features; Building a scenario and identifying intended users (Uschold & King) Identifying a range of potential informal competency questions to be addressed. In parallel we start collecting references for: Eliciting the main characteristics of the domain Investigating existing projects involving the use of ontologies in historical domains. Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Conceptualization: Identifying main concepts and relations (inspired by METHONTOLOGY & KANGA) Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Logical representation and coding Choosing the ontology language Converting glossary knowledge into formal representation Querying and reasoning about the domain Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary

Problem Existing Ontology methods and Methodologies are mostly suitable for large scale ontology development Outcomes  Domain ontology methodology (History of Science) as a result of relevant elements and aspects taken from existing methods/methodologies  Potentially, the outlined domain ontology methodology can be domain independent Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary