Two Approaches to Ontology Aggregation Based on Axiom Weakening

Axiom weakening is a novel technique that allows for fine-grained repair of inconsistent ontologies. In a multi-agent setting, integrating ontologies corresponding to multiple agents may lead to inconsistencies. Such inconsistencies can be resolved after the integrated ontology has been built, or their generation can be prevented during ontology generation. We implement and compare these two approaches. First, we study how to repair an inconsistent ontology resulting from a voting-based aggregation of views of heterogeneous agents. Second, we prevent the generation of inconsistencies by letting the agents engage in a turn-based rational protocol about the axioms to be added to the integrated ontology. We instantiate the two approaches using real-world ontologies and compare them by measuring the levels of satisfaction of the agents w.r.t. the ontology obtained by the two procedures

Using Quantitative Aspects of Alignment Generation for Argumentation on Mappings

State-of-the art mappers articulate several techniques using different sources of knowledge in an unified process. An important issue of ontology mapping is to find ways of choosing among many techniques and their variations, and then combining their results. For this, an innovative and promising option is to use frameworks dealing with arguments for or against correspondences. In this paper, we re-use an argumentation framework that considers the confidence levels of mapping arguments. We also propose new frameworks that use voting as a way to cope with various degrees of consensus among arguments. We compare these frameworks by evaluating their application to a range of individual mappers, in the context of a real-world library case

Ontology matching: state of the art and future challenges

shvaiko2013aInternational audienceAfter years of research on ontology matching, it is reasonable to consider several questions: is the field of ontology matching still making progress? Is this progress significant enough to pursue some further research? If so, what are the particularly promising directions? To answer these questions, we review the state of the art of ontology matching and analyze the results of recent ontology matching evaluations. These results show a measurable improvement in the field, the speed of which is albeit slowing down. We conjecture that significant improvements can be obtained only by addressing important challenges for ontology matching. We present such challenges with insights on how to approach them, thereby aiming to direct research into the most promising tracks and to facilitate the progress of the field

Analysing how constraints impact architectural decision-making

Architectural design projects are characterised by a high number of constraints. Along with planning, energy performance and fire safety regulations, current designers have to face constraining factors related to budget, acoustics, orientation, wind turbulence, accessibility for the disabled, and so forth. These constraints steer the design process implicitly and explicitly in certain directions as soon as architectural designers aim at satisfying design briefs. We aim in this article at analysing the impact of such constraints on the design process. At this end, we have studied four design sessions in a particular (student) design use case. In analysing these four sessions, we used linkography as a method, because this appeared to be one of the better options to obtain a more quantitative assessment of the design process. The linkography method was combined with an interview of the student design team, in order to check the correctness of our conclusions

Inhabiting - landscapes and natures

About the book: The Handbook of Cultural Geography presents a state of the art assessment of the key questions informing cultural geography. Emphasizing the intellectual diversity of the discipline, the Handbook presents a comprehensive statement of the relationship between the cultural imagination and the geographical imagination while also looking at resonances between cultural geography and other disciplines. The work is cross-referenced throughout and presents a completely integrated overview of cultural geography. This will be an essential reference for any inquiry into how culture is spatially constituted and, equally, how geography is culturally constructed

BIOLOGICAL TAXONOMY AND ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT: SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

The prospects of integrating full-blown biological taxonomies into an ontological reasoning framework are critically reviewed. The common usage of a static 'snapshot' hierarchy in ontological representations of taxonomy is contrasted with a more realistic situation that involves dynamic, piece-meal revisions of particular taxonomic groups and requires alignment with relevant preceding perspectives. Taxonomic practice is characterized by a range of phenomena that are orthogonal to the logical background from which ontological entities and relationships originate, and therefore pose special challenges to ontological representation and reasoning. Among these phenomena are: (1) the notion that there is a single phylogenetic hierarchy in nature which taxonomy can only gradually approximate; (2) the evolvability of taxa which means that taxon-defining features may be lost in subordinate members or independently gained across multiple sections of the tree of life; (3) the hybrid approach of defining taxa both in reference to properties (intensional) and members (ostensive) which undermines the individual/class dichotomy sustaining conventional ontologies; (4) the idiosyncratic yet inferentially valuable usage of Linnaean ranks; (5) the indelible and semantically complex 250-year legacy of nomenclatural and taxonomic changes that characterizes the current system; (6) the insufficient taxonomic exploration of large portions of the tree of life; and the need to use a sophisticated terminology for aligning taxonomic entities in order to integrate both (7) single and (8) multiple hierarchies. It is suggested that research along the taxonomy/ontology interface should focus on either strictly nomenclatural entities or specialize in ontology-driven methods for producing alignments between multiple taxonomies