Authors:
C. Maria Keet
and
Zubeida Casmod Dawood
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal and UKZN/CSIR-Meraka Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research, South Africa
Keyword(s):
Foundational Ontology, Ontology Mediation, Semantic Interoperability, Ontology Alignment, Ontology Mapping, Ontology Matching, Ontology Merging.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontology Matching and Alignment
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
An approach in achieving semantic interoperability among heterogeneous systems is to offer infrastructure to assist with linking and integration using a foundational ontology. Due to the creation of multiple foundational ontologies, this also means linking and integrating those ones. In order to achieve this, we have selected the widely used foundational ontologies DOLCE, BFO, and GFO, and their related modules, on which to perform ontology mediation (alignment, mapping, and merging). The foundational ontologies were aligned by identifying correspondences between ontology entities using seven tools, documentation, and our manual alignments, and comparing their effectiveness. Thereafter, based on the alignments, we created correspondences in the ontology files resulting in entity mappings and merged ontologies. However, during the mapping process, it was found that differences in foundational ontologies, such as their hierarchical structure, conflicting axioms due to complement and di
sjointness, and incompatible domain and range restriction, cause logical inconsistencies in foundational ontology alignments, thereby greatly reducing the number of mappings. We analyse and present these logical inconsistencies with possible solutions to some of them.
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