Developing a methodology for building small scale domain ontologies: HISO case study

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

2. Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary Our goal is: To re-use and deploy relevant elements and aspects of existing methods and methodologies for building a small scale domain ontology • 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?

3. Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary 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”

4. Research Problem and Questions Terminology issues: IEEE definitions Existing Methodologies and Methods HISO methodology Summary • METHONTOLOGY (based on the IEEE 1074-1995)-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)

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. 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

12. 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 • Investigatingexisting projectsinvolving the use of ontologies in historical domains.

13. 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)

14. 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

15. 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