Interoperability of disparate engineering domain ontologies using basic formal ontology

Abstract

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organize disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies.As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DAMM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge.The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine.

An Ontology-Based Approach to Enable Data-Driven Research in the Field of NDT in Civil Engineering

“…The subject of [77] is a set of mid-level ontologies based on the BFO. Finally, domain-level ontologies "are developed to represent the knowledge and terminology specific to a professional, scientific, or similar domain" [78]. Domain ontologies, as ontological tools, are closer to the definition of the interoperability problem in the corresponding domain.…”

Approaching Healthy City Ontology: First-Level Classes Definition Using BFO

“…Several publications have already been produced discussing the main structure of BFO and its components [37,59,60]. In addition, attention has also been brought to its use in domains related to science and technology [61][62][63][64].…”

“…BFO and its components [37,59,60]. In addition, attention has also been brought to its use in domains related to science and technology [61][62][63][64]. BFO represents consistent support for building domain ontologies by providing a pre-established top-level structure and a set of ready-made answers to facilitate and increase the possibility of sharing knowledge among multiple domain ontologies produced following its principles.…”

Patterns in forming the ontology-based environment of information-analytical activity in administrative management

“…Determining the basics of the ontological description of the architecture of information and knowledge organization in a large corporation has become essential [10][11][12][13][14]. In study [10], the corporation was analyzed in two dimensions: descriptive and normative.…”

“…In paper [13], it is determined how to overcome significant barriers that prevent the wider use of ontologies in the technique. The major obstacle among them is the lack of a common top-level ontology for the unification and organization of various aspects of the information field and coordination of the joint development of orthogonal ontology.…”