Use of Ontological Networks in Decision Support Systems Under Ambiguity

Abstract

I. RESEARCH PROBLEM A prerequisite for making an effective decision is the formation of a correct conceptual model of the problem situation. Such a model should contain concepts, attitudes and limitations that most accurately reflect the problem situation. The result of building such a model is the conceptualization of the problem situation. Such a conceptualization, presented formally, is an ontology of this situation. Using ontologies of problem situations allows you to save and reuse knowledge about decision-making and use intelligent software agents to support decision-making. To build an ontology of a problem situation, it is advisable to use knowledge from existing ontologies. This is a difficult task due to the availability of similar competencies of ontologies. The principle of multiplicity of ontologies today is manifested both at the level of higher-level ontologies (SUMO, DOLCE, UFO, GFO), which use different principles of construction, and at the level of industry ontologies. For example, the authors of GFO [2] put the principle of multiplicity in the basis of their development and consider GFO as a set of different ontologies. The reason for this multiplicity is that each ontology reflects both the common (common intentionality [2]) and specific understanding of the authors on the subject area. This problem in practice is reflected in the complexity of building a single data scheme, even within a single enterprise, which served as the basis for the development of service-oriented architectures [3]. The authors [4] substantiated the advantages of using many ontologies, in particular the possibility of using differences in understanding and specification of concepts in different ontologies in order to choose the best match. Such ontologies form ontology networks in which correspondence relations are established between the concepts and relations of different ontologies, expressed in articulation rules. In the process of constructing an ontology of a problem situation, there is a problem of ambiguity of choice, when several ontologies have similar concepts that can be used in the ontology of a problem situation.