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Conceptual modelling and the quality of ontologies: A comparison between object-role modelling and the object paradigm
Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations produced. The paper aims
to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of
software applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the Object Role Modelling (ORM) approach is re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP). Next, the two ontologies are analytically compared using the specified criteria. The conducted
comparison highlights that using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive, reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the basis of the ORM approach
Conceptual Modelling and The Quality of Ontologies: Endurantism Vs. Perdurantism
Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable
semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet
these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an
ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses
the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific
concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations
produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm
adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential
impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software
applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the
Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is
re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a
representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically
compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that
using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive,
reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the
basis of the ORM approach
Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems
The modelling, analysis, and visualisation of dynamic geospatial phenomena
has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation
Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged
paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises
fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational, and
(analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial
information theoretic underpinnings.
We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of
high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic
geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense
reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and
reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, and computational models of
narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that
accrue in the context of formal reasoning about `space, events, actions, and
change'. With this as a basis, and within the backdrop of an illustrated
scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address
specific problems and solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative
abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical
geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that
next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific
perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and
Cognitive Science.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer
interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics;
computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling;
ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance
systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964);
Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental
Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press
An Introduction to Ontology
Analytical philosophy of the last one hundred years has been heavily influenced by a doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic as conceived by Frege and Russell. More specifically, it is a doctrine to the effect that the key to the ontological structure of reality is captured syntactically in the âFaâ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the âRabâ) of first-order logic, where âFâ stands for what is general in reality and âaâ for what is individual. Hence âf(a)ntologyâ. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressionsââFâ, âGâ, âRâ, etc., and âaâ, âbâ, âcâ, etc.âso reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects), the relation between these two kinds of entity being revealed in the predicate-argument structure of atomic formulas in first-order logic
Advanced Knowledge Technologies at the Midterm: Tools and Methods for the Semantic Web
The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the authorâs and shouldnât be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.In a celebrated essay on the new electronic media, Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962:Our private senses are not closed systems but are endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very
instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that
they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan 1962, p.5, emphasis in original)Over forty years later, the seamless interplay that McLuhan demanded between our
technologies is still barely visible. McLuhanâs predictions of the spread, and increased importance, of electronic media have of course been borne out, and the worlds of business, science and knowledge storage and transfer have been revolutionised. Yet
the integration of electronic systems as open systems remains in its infancy.Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) aims to address this problem, to create a view of knowledge and its management across its lifecycle, to research and create the
services and technologies that such unification will require. Half way through its sixyear span, the results are beginning to come through, and this paper will explore some of the services, technologies and methodologies that have been developed. We hope to give a sense in this paper of the potential for the next three years, to discuss the insights and lessons learnt in the first phase of the project, to articulate the challenges and issues that remain.The WWW provided the original context that made the AKT approach to knowledge
management (KM) possible. AKT was initially proposed in 1999, it brought together an interdisciplinary consortium with the technological breadth and complementarity to create the conditions for a unified approach to knowledge across its lifecycle. The
combination of this expertise, and the time and space afforded the consortium by the
IRC structure, suggested the opportunity for a concerted effort to develop an approach
to advanced knowledge technologies, based on the WWW as a basic infrastructure.The technological context of AKT altered for the better in the short period between the development of the proposal and the beginning of the project itself with the development of the semantic web (SW), which foresaw much more intelligent manipulation and querying of knowledge. The opportunities that the SW provided for e.g., more intelligent retrieval, put AKT in the centre of information technology innovation and knowledge management services; the AKT skill set would clearly be central for the exploitation of those opportunities.The SW, as an extension of the WWW, provides an interesting set of constraints to
the knowledge management services AKT tries to provide. As a medium for the
semantically-informed coordination of information, it has suggested a number of ways in which the objectives of AKT can be achieved, most obviously through the
provision of knowledge management services delivered over the web as opposed to the creation and provision of technologies to manage knowledge.AKT is working on the assumption that many web services will be developed and provided for users. The KM problem in the near future will be one of deciding which services are needed and of coordinating them. Many of these services will be largely or entirely legacies of the WWW, and so the capabilities of the services will vary. As well as providing useful KM services in their own right, AKT will be aiming to exploit this opportunity, by reasoning over services, brokering between them, and providing essential meta-services for SW knowledge service management.Ontologies will be a crucial tool for the SW. The AKT consortium brings a lot of expertise on ontologies together, and ontologies were always going to be a key part of the strategy. All kinds of knowledge sharing and transfer activities will be mediated by ontologies, and ontology management will be an important enabling task. Different
applications will need to cope with inconsistent ontologies, or with the problems that will follow the automatic creation of ontologies (e.g. merging of pre-existing
ontologies to create a third). Ontology mapping, and the elimination of conflicts of
reference, will be important tasks. All of these issues are discussed along with our
proposed technologies.Similarly, specifications of tasks will be used for the deployment of knowledge services over the SW, but in general it cannot be expected that in the medium term there will be standards for task (or service) specifications. The brokering metaservices
that are envisaged will have to deal with this heterogeneity.The emerging picture of the SW is one of great opportunity but it will not be a wellordered, certain or consistent environment. It will comprise many repositories of legacy data, outdated and inconsistent stores, and requirements for common understandings across divergent formalisms. There is clearly a role for standards to play to bring much of this context together; AKT is playing a significant role in these efforts. But standards take time to emerge, they take political power to enforce, and they have been known to stifle innovation (in the short term). AKT is keen to understand the balance between principled inference and statistical processing of web content. Logical inference on the Web is tough. Complex queries using traditional AI inference methods bring most distributed computer systems to their knees. Do we set up semantically well-behaved areas of the Web? Is any part of the Web in which
semantic hygiene prevails interesting enough to reason in? These and many other
questions need to be addressed if we are to provide effective knowledge technologies
for our content on the web
A semantic and language-based representation of an environmental scene
The modeling of a landscape environment is a cognitive activity that requires appropriate spatial representations. The research presented in this paper introduces a structural and semantic categorization of a landscape view based on panoramic photographs that act as a substitute of a given natural environment. Verbal descriptions of a landscape scene provide themodeling input of our approach. This structure-based model identifies the spatial, relational, and semantic constructs that emerge from these descriptions. Concepts in the environment are qualified according to a semantic classification, their proximity and direction to the observer, and the spatial relations that qualify them. The resulting model is represented in a way that constitutes a modeling support for the study of environmental scenes, and a contribution for further research oriented to the mapping of a verbal description onto a geographical information system-based representation
From geographical innovation clusters towards virtual innovation clusters: The innovation virtual system
The opportunities of the new economic landscape have determined radical changes in the organizational structures of the firms, till the creation of new virtual clusterization forms, that is distinct systems of suppliers, distributors, service providers and clients that use the 'internetworking technologies' as a principal way for co-operating and competing. These 'virtual clusterization forms' that have been also defined as 'e-business communities' or 'b-web communities' (Tapscott, Lowy & Ticoll, 2000), are here defined as 'virtual clusters'. In a virtual cluster (VC), each enterprise adds one or more distinct aspects of product/service value to the value of the network, by exchanging digital knowledge with other members. Recent studies, focused on VCs, highlight that the VC enabling factors may be identified in ICTs ubiquity (increasingly wireless) and bandwidth robustness, that allow firms to access real-time what they need and to co-ordinate their intra and inter-firm activities, creating value both by offering innovative and personalized products, services and by cutting transaction costs. (Davin and Botkin, 1994) (Rayport and Sviokla, 1995). This paper focuses on these VCs innovation processes, in order to make some comparisons between the traditional geographical innovation clusters and the emerging virtual innovation clusters. To this end, the paper is organized in two logical patterns: Some empirical evidence for describing ad discussing the more important features of the emerging VCs. Specifically, the paper focuses on the following issues: - Some first results on VCs characteristics, regarding four distinctive features of their new world of business: i. Agents: radical increase in the number of agents that form a cluster. ii. Connections: virtually unlimited increase in the number of connections and therefore in the potential size of the cluster. iii. Space: delocalization of transactions which become space independent. iv. Time: information transmission takes place at the speed of electronic communication. - The analysis of the VC basic unit, the Internetworked Enterprise (IE), and of its learning process with customers and trough strategic alliances. A model of the VCs global virtual learning environment, here conceived as a system of innovation, defined as 'Innovation Virtual System' (IVS). IVS is here interpreted as a new way of projecting the traditional systems of innovation into a global scale.
Technology Integration around the Geographic Information: A State of the Art
One of the elements that have popularized and facilitated the use of geographical information on a variety of computational applications has been the use of Web maps; this has opened new research challenges on different subjects, from locating places and people, the study of social behavior or the analyzing of the hidden structures of the terms used in a natural language query used for locating a place. However, the use of geographic information under technological features is not new, instead it has been part of a development and technological integration process. This paper presents a state of the art review about the application of geographic information under different approaches: its use on location based services, the collaborative user participation on it, its contextual-awareness, its use in the Semantic Web and the challenges of its use in natural languge queries. Finally, a prototype that integrates most of these areas is presented
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