Applicability of a Foundational Ontology to Semantically Enrich the

Core and Domain Ontologies

Luis Olsina

GIDIS_Web, Engineering School, UNLPam, General Pico, LP, Argentina

Keywords: Thing Ontology, Foundational Ontology, Core Ontology, Domain Ontology, Ontological Architecture.

Abstract: This paper analyses the key terms, relationships and axioms of ThingFO (Thing Foundational Ontology),

which is an ontology devoted for particular and universal things and assertions. It is placed at the foundational

level in the context of a five-tier ontological architecture. This architecture groups together foundational, core,

top-domain, low-domain, and instance levels, making ThingFO the single ontology at the top level. Thus, the

ontologies at lower levels reuse and specialize, for example, its terms and relationships. To illustrate the

applicability of ThingFO, this work also discusses enriched terms and specialized relationships for a core

ontology, particularly for situation, where its concepts are themselves cross-cutting concerns for different

domain terminologies. In addition, verification and validation issues are addressed as well.

1 INTRODUCTION

A foundational ontology –also known as top-level or

upper– is independent of any domain. It is at the

highest level of reference terminologies useful for the

sciences. Even core ontologies such as situation,

event, or process are domain-independent reference

terminologies, but they can semantically extend or

reuse foundational elements. Note that domain-

dependent ontologies are the most massive

terminologies built to date, such as for software,

health, or mechanic. But most of the existing domain

ontologies are not based on core and/or foundational

terminologies. Or, if they do, there is often no clear

separation of concerns considering ontological levels.

As indicated in (Horsch et al., 2020), top-level

ontologies are becoming increasingly important for

integrating heterogeneous knowledge bases coming

from different sources and domains of sciences.

The main reason for adopting, adapting or

creating an upper ontology should be that it has a

minimum set of particular and universal concepts of

the described world so that they can be reused

accordingly across domains. As a consequence, a

large number of lower-level ontologies can fall under

the umbrella of such a top-level ontology.

Considering the endeavor of developing

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8969-4376

ontologies, (Schneider, 2003) indicates that most

knowledge engineers are unaware of the challenges

of building an upper ontology, because it involves

issues that are unusual for the practice of representing

concrete knowledge for specific domains. Thus, to

build an upper ontology a transdisciplinary

knowledge is required not only in various areas of

Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence, but

also in Cognitive Sciences and Philosophy.

In fact, although thousands of domain ontologies

have been developed so far, only fewer than a dozen

well-known upper ontologies have been built in the

last three decades, such as Cyc (Lenat et al., 1990),

BFO (Arp et al., 2015), DOLCE (Masolo et al., 2002),

PROTON (Casellas et al., 2005), GFO (Herre, 2010),

SUMO (Pease, 2011), and UFO (Guizzardi, 2005).

In the light of these efforts, this work discuss

ThingFO, which is a foundational ontology for

particular and universal things and assertions placed

at the highest level in the context of a five-tier

ontological architecture called FCD-OntoArch

(Foundational, Core, Domain, and instance

Ontological Architecture). Why the need to build

another foundational ontology is also justified later.

The main contribution of this paper is to analyze

key features of ThingFO in the context of the above

mentioned architecture. It also illustrates the

applicability of ThingFO to enrich concepts of a core

Olsina, L.

Applicability of a Foundational Ontology to Semantically Enrich the Core and Domain Ontologies.

DOI: 10.5220/0010641000003064

In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2021) - Volume 2: KEOD, pages 111-119

ISBN: 978-989-758-533-3; ISSN: 2184-3228

111

ontology, where its concepts are themselves cross-

cutting concerns for domain ontologies.

Note that the first version (v1.0) of ThingFO was

published at a national conference (Olsina, 2020).

Since then the current version (v1.2) has been

validated with external experts, which allowed

adding, for example, new non-taxonomic

relationships, properties and three axioms, among

other improvements. Additionally, this work deals

with verification aspects, which were not covered

before.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows:

Section 2 provides an overview of FCD-OntoArch, in

which ThingFO and lower-level ontologies are

placed. Section 3 discusses the elements of ThingFO.

Section 4 illustrates the usefulness of ThingFO for

enriching terms and relationships of a couple of

lower-level ontologies. Section 5 provides a

discussion, and Section 6 summarizes conclusions.

2 ThingFO AND ITS CONTEXT

As mentioned above, ThingFO is placed at the

foundational level into the FCD-OntoArch

architecture. Figure 1 depicts its five tiers, which

entails foundational, core, top-domain, low-domain

and instance levels. Each level is populated with

ontological components, i.e., ontologies.

Figure 1 also shows that ontologies at the same

level can be related to each other, except for the

Foundational Ontological Level where only ThingFO

is found. Additionally, ontologies' terms and

relationships at lower levels can be semantically

enriched or specialized by ontologies' terms and

relationships from higher levels. Since ThingFO is at

the highest level, ontologies at lower levels benefit

from reusing and specializing its concepts.

ThingFO has three key terms namely Thing,

Thing Category and Assertion that semantically

enrich terms of components at lower levels. For

example, TestTDO, a software testing ontology

placed at the top-domain ontological level is enriched

by concepts of SituationCO and ProcessCO placed at

the core ontological level. In turn, both are enriched

by the abovementioned terms of ThingFO.

The concepts of ThingFO are independent of any

domain. From top to bottom, the next level is called

Core Ontological Level. Ontologies such as

ProcessCO, GoalCO, SituationCO and PEventCO are

located at this level, among others not shown in the

figure such as ProjectCO. Their concepts are also

independent of any domain, but they are closer to

different domains. For example, the term Activity in

ProcessCO (Becker et al., 2021) is specialized in each

domain accordingly. Thus, we have specific-domain

Activities for measurement, testing, or development.

On the other hand, ProcessCO includes terms with the

semantics of Thing such as Work Entity (Work

Process, Activity, Task), or Artefact. It is important

to remark that ontological components at the same

level may reuse terms with each other entirely.

Looking at Figure 1, the next level is called Top-

Domain Ontological Level. Ontologies such as

TestTDO (Tebes et al., 2020), FRsTDO (FRs stands

for Functional Requirements), NFRsTDO (NFRs

stands for Non-Functional Requirements), and

MEvalTDO (MEval stands for Measurement and

Evaluation) are located at this level, among others not

shown in the figure. Note that the terminological

coverage of a top-domain ontology can serve as the

basis for the development of low-level (more

specific) domain ontologies. For instance, at the Low-

domain Ontological Level, the MetricsLDO and

IndicatorsLDO components are depicted, but as the

reader may surmise, many others can be conceived at

this level.

Lastly, at the Instance Ontological Level, we can

place ontologies such as instances of units (UnitIO in

Figure 1), instances of quality characteristics, to name

just a few.

Therefore, the described multitier architecture

promotes a clear separation of concerns by

considering the ontological levels and allotting built

ontologies in the right place. This also fosters the

modularity, extensibility and reuse of ontological

elements throughout the levels.

Figure 1: The five-tier ontological architecture named

FCD-OntoArch, where ontological components are placed.

ThingFO and ontological components at the core level are

domain independent. Note that the figure does not depict all

the developed components to date.

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3 REPRESENTING ThingFO

As previously mentioned, building a foundational

ontology requires a transdisciplinary knowledge. This

is so because we are dealing with mental

representations of human agents (subjects as Things),

who explicitly make claims about the essentials of

Things (objects) and their invisible links between

them in particular and universal situations of the

world. To put it elegantly, to represent a top-level

ontology, the eyes of the subject's mind must be at the

highest level.

Developing an upper ontology involves

challenges that are unusual for the common practice

of knowledge representation (Schneider, 2003). On

one hand, the need for descriptive adequacy requires

a considerable subtlety of conceptual analysis based

on sound philosophical and cognitive grounds. On the

other hand, the usefulness of an upper ontology

depends on the greatest possible formal simplicity

and transparency, as well as the completeness and

conciseness of the elements included.

Foundational ontologies are representations about

domain-independent top-level primitive constructs

such as thing, property, power, relations, thing

category, as well as assertions that deal with them.

Hence, the main goal and requirement to conceive an

upper ontology is to have a minimum set of particular

and universal concepts of the target world, that is, key

terms, properties, relationships and constraints that

represent the world so that they can be reused and

specialized, and ultimately can be useful and easy to

adopt or adapt across all domains of the different

sciences.

Therefore, in sub-section 3.1, we first discuss the

terms Thing, Property and Power and their main

relationships. Then, in sub-section 3.2, we analyse the

terms Thing Category and Assertion. Particularly, we

discuss types of Assertions that a human agent can

formulate about things and categories. Note that we

describe the ThingFO conceptualization of Figure 2

using the following text convention: ontology terms

begin with capital letters, properties are italicized, and

relationships are underlined.

The reader can check the entire ThingFO

documentation at http://bit.ly/ThingFO.

3.1 Thing, Property and Power

The term Thing represents a particular, tangible or

intangible object of a given particular world, but not

a universal category, which is modelled by the term

Thing Category. A particular object or entity

represents and implies unique individuals or

instances. Therefore, a particular Thing results in

instances, whereas a universal Thing, i.e., a Thing

Category does not result in instances, at least with

valuable meaning of individual.

A Thing is not a particular object without its

Properties and its Powers, so “things, properties and

powers all emerge simultaneously to form a unity”

[…] “Things, properties and powers are necessary

and sufficient for the existence of this unity”

(Fleetwood, 2009). Moreover, a Thing cannot exist or

be in spatiotemporal isolation from other Things. This

principle of non-isolation is represented among

Things in Figure 2 through the relationship relates

with, in which the cardinality is at least one.

Figure 2: UML diagram of the terms, properties and relationships of the Thing Foundational Ontology (ThingFO).

Applicability of a Foundational Ontology to Semantically Enrich the Core and Domain Ontologies

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Thus, in a particular situation of the represented

world, a Thing (or many) in the role of the target is

always surrounded by other Things in the role of the

environment. This is modeled in SituationCO by

including the terms Target Entity and Context Entity,

as we will exemplify in sub-section 4.1. Note,

however, under the principles of simplicity and

conciseness, we tried to delegate most of the

responsibilities to the core ontologies so as not to

overload ThingFO with derivable terms, relationships

and axioms. This lack of conciseness often occurs in

other related work, as we will discuss in Section 5.

Property has a structural description that refers to

the intrinsic constitution, structure, or parts of a

particular Thing, whereas Power has a behavioral

description that refers to what a particular Thing does,

can do or behave. Thus, the behavioral description

portrays the Power of a Thing in terms of

responsibilities, operations or actions.

According to (Fleetwood, 2009) “Powers are the

way of acting of a things’ properties; powers are a

things’ properties in action”. Also, he states that

“Things have properties, these properties instantiate

[…] acting powers, and this ensemble of things,

properties and powers cause any events that might

occur”. These Fleetwood’s statements are represented

in the following relationships. One or more Properties

enable one or more Powers. In turn, Powers act upon

Properties, as well as can interact with other Things.

For ThingFO to be actionable at lower levels, three

axioms were defined, which were not available in

(Olsina, 2020). They are specified in first-order logic

in the linked documentation referenced above, so

only the textual description follows:

 All Property of a Thing enables only its Powers;

 The Power of a Thing only acts upon its Properties;

 The Power of a Thing only interacts with other

Things.

Powers and Properties are two members of the triad

that conform the particular entity named Thing.

Hence, there is no Power or energy alone floating in

the air that can be dissociated from a Thing. Lastly, it

is important to note that a Property, which is a

member of the triad that makes up a given Thing,

most of the time, is seen as other particular Thing

outside of it, with its own Properties and Powers.

3.2 Thing Category and Assertions

Thing Category represents a universal of a set of

particulars conceived by the human being's mind for

classification purposes. Whereas a Thing represents a

concrete object or entity, which implies unique

instances, a Category of Thing represents an abstract

or universal entity in which the instances do not have

valuable meaning of individual. Therefore, a Thing

Category does not exist, is or can be in a given

particular world as a Thing does. On the contrary, it

can only be mentally formed or developed by human

beings as an abstract or generic construct, which in

turn, hierarchies of sub-categories can be developed.

Ultimately, a Thing Category predicates on

related particular objects. That is, it predicates on

the common essence of Things which, therefore,

belong to the intended Category of Thing.

Lastly, the third key term in ThingFO is Assertion.

This construct has a great conceptual impact when a

human agent intentionally represents and models

particular and universal Things and situations of the

world in question.

Assertion is defined as “A positive and explicit

statement that somebody makes about something

concerning Things, or their categories, based on

thoughts, perceptions, facts, intuitions, intentions,

and/or beliefs that is conceived with an attempt at

furnishing current or subsequent evidence”.

Regarding a particular or universal, a positive

statement refers to what it is, was, or will be.

Therefore, it contains no indication of approval (e.g.

I like it) or disapproval. Assertions are conceptualized

consequences of persons’ mental models of the

represented world, phenomenon, or situation at hand.

Considering the part of the previous phrase that

indicates “…statement that somebody makes about

…” means that for instance a concrete human being –

as a particular Thing- defines or conceives

Assertions. And considering the part of the same

phrase that indicates “…about something concerning

Things…” means, for example, about the substance,

structure, behavior, situation, quantity, quality,

among other aspects of Things or Thing Categories.

To be valuable, actionable and ultimately useful

for any science, an Assertion should largely be

verified and/or validated by theoretical and/or

empirical evidence. Assertions can be represented by

informal, semiformal or formal specification

languages. Thus, a specification can include text in

natural language, mathematical or logical

expressions, well-formed models and diagrams,

among other representations.

There is only Assertion on Particulars for Things

and Assertion on Universals for Thing Categories.

Notice the constraint with the label {complete,

disjoint} set in the inheritance relationship in

Figure 2. Hence, Assertion on Particulars

deals with

particulars (Things), whereas Assertion on Universals

deals with universals (Thing Categories).

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In addition, Figure 2 shows 12 types of Assertions

that allow specifying and representing the substance,

situation, relations, structure, behavior, intention,

quantity and quality, among other aspects related to

Things and Thing Categories. Notice also the

constraint with the label {incomplete,

disjoint} set in the inheritance relationship.

In the sequel, we describe a subset of types of

Assertions for space limits. The reader can see all the

term definitions at http://bit.ly/ThingFO. For the sake

of illustration, the reader can realize that a

conceptualization of an ontology as an artefact (e.g.,

the ThingFO UML diagram in Figure 2, plus the

linked document with the definition of terms,

properties, and non-taxonomic relationships as well

as specifications of axioms) represents a combination

of Substance-, Relation-, Structure-, Intention-,

Situation- and Constraint-related Assertions.

A Substance-related Assertion is related to the

ontological significance and essential import of a

Thing as a whole entity, or a set of Things. Substance

aspects can be specified for Particulars and can also

be abstracted for Universals.

A Relation-related Assertion refers to logical or

natural associations between two or more Things and

their categories. As abovementioned, a Thing cannot

exist or be in spatiotemporal isolation from other

Things in a given particular world. Therefore, a Thing

is related to other Things. Also, it can be specified for

both Particulars and Universals.

A Structure-related Assertion is related to the

Property term, which represents the intrinsic

constitution, structure, or parts of a Thing. Structural

aspects can be specified for Particulars and can also

be abstracted for Universals.

An Intention-related Assertion is related to the

aim to be achieved by some agent. The statement of

an Intention-related Assertion considers the

propositional content of a goal purpose in a given

situation and time frame. It can be specified for both

Particulars and Universals.

A Situation-related Assertion is related to the

combination of circumstances, episodes, and

relationships/events between target Things and

context entities that surround them, or their

categories, which is of interest or meaningful to be

represented or modeled by an intended agent. A

Situation can be represented statically or dynamically

depending on the intention of the agent. The

conceptualization of an ontology embraces a static

representation. It can be specified for Particulars and

generalized for Universals.

Finally, a Constraint-related Assertion is related

to the specification of restrictions or conditions

imposed to Things, Properties, relationships,

interactions or Thing Categories that must be satisfied

or evaluated to true in given situations or events. It

can be specified for both Particulars and Universals.

4 ThingFO APPLICABILITY

To analyse its applicability and usefulness, the

present work illustrates semantically enriched terms

and specializations of non-taxonomic relationships

for an ontology at the core level like SituationCO. Its

concepts (along with ProcessCO) are themselves

cross-cutting concerns primarily for domain

terminologies. Furthermore, we showcase the utility

of ThingFO together with these core ontologies, by

which domain ontologies reuse some of their

conceptual blocks or patterns.

It is worth mentioning that this work uses

stereotypes as a mechanism to semantically enrich the

terms. Stereotypes are, in some cases, a more suitable

mechanism that inheritance relationships, since they

generate a loose coupling between a lower-level

component and a higher-level component. Also,

stereotypes can reduce the complexity of the model,

promoting comprehensibility and communicability.

Next, in sub-section 4.1, we describe how some

ThingFO terms are stereotyped in SituationCO. Also,

we see how ThingFO relationships are specialized.

To do this, we address aspects of the SituationCO vs.

ThingFO non-taxonomic relationship verification

matrix. Then, in sub-section 4.2, we briefly point out

how these foundational and core concepts and

patterns are extended or reused by domain ontologies.

It is important to note that we are not going to

discuss the content of the SituationCO ontology, but

rather the enrichment and reuse mechanism of some

of its terms and relationships. The reader interested in

SituationCO can consult all the documentation at

http://bit.ly/SituationCO.

4.1 SituationCO Reuses ThingFO

Figure 3 depicts a fragment of the conceptualization

of SituationCO with most of its elements reused from

ThingFO. SituationCO is placed at the Core

Ontological Level in the context of FCD-OntoArch

(Figure 1). This ontology, which mainly deals with

Particular and Generic Situations for a given Goal and

problem at hand, was developed rather recently.

Situation is defined as a Situation-related

Assertion that explicitly states and specifies the

combination of circumstances, episodes and

relationships/events embracing particular entities and

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their surroundings, or categories of entities and their

related generic context, which is of interest and

relevant to be represented by a Human

Agent/Organization with an established Goal. Its

concepts primarily extend from ThingFO, and it also

borrows some core concepts from the GoalCO,

ProcessCO and ProjectCO components.

The term Thing semantically enriches the terms

Target Entity and Context Entity, in addition to the

completely reused terms of the core components

mentioned above, such as Project, Organization and

Human Agent. The term Thing Category semantically

enriches the term Entity Category and Context

Category. So concrete Context Entities pertain to

category Context Category, as seen in Figure 3.

Besides, the term Situation has the semantics of

Situation-related Assertion. In turn, a Particular

Situation has the semantics of Assertion on

Particulars, while a Generic Situation of Assertion on

Universals. Also, Goal –term reused from GoalCO-

has the semantics of Intention-related Assertion. For

the sake of a summary, a Human Agent/Organization

conceives /establishes a Goal that implies a Situation,

which is represented by a Situation Model. A Project

operationalizes Goals and specifies a Situation.

Note that non-taxonomic relationships were

verified with those of ThingFO. Table 1 represents an

excerpt from ThingFO's non-taxonomic relationships

that SituationCO specializes. Table 2 shows the

resulting correspondence. The complete non-

taxonomic relationship verification matrix is found in

the end of the document at http://bit.ly/SituationCO.

Table 1: An excerpt from ThingFO's non-taxonomic

relationships, which SituationCO specializes in Table 2.

ThingFO Term 1 Relationship ThingFO Term2

Assertion on

Particulars

deals with

particulars

Thing

Thing relates with Thing

Thing defines Assertion

Assertion relates with Assertion

Thing

elongs to Thing Category

Table 2: Correspondence of SituationCO (SCO)'s non-

taxonomic relationships with those of ThingFO in Table 1.

SCO Term 1 Relationship SCO Term 2

Particular Situation deals with target Target Entity

Target Entity is surrounded by Context Entity

Human Agent conceives Goal

Goal implies Situation

Context Entity

pertains to

category

Context Category

4.2 Benefits at the Domain Level

As mentioned above, foundational and core terms,

relationships, and conceptual blocks are reused and

extended by domain ontologies. For example,

TestTDO is a top-domain ontology for software

testing activities, methods and projects, which is

terminologically benefited from ThingFO,

SituationCO and ProcessCO. For space reasons, we

focus only on a few conceptual blocks. The comments

below also apply to some other domain ontologies.

The term Particular Situation (Figure 3) enriches

the term Test Particular Situation. Hence, TestTDO

specializes the Particular Situation pattern including

the three terms renamed Test Particular Situation,

Testable Entity and Test Context Entity. SituationCO

relationships such as deals with target/environment,

is surrounded by and influences are also mirrored in

the Test Particular Situation conceptual block.

Furthermore, the Project pattern is also reflected

in TestTDO, in which Test Project operationalizes the

Test Goal and specifies the Test Particular Situation.

Lastly, TestTDO extends from ProcessCO, the

consumes/produces pattern (Becker et al., 2021).

5 DISCUSSION

This Section summarizes related work and provides a

discussion on upper ontologies. As pointed out in the

Introduction Section, although thousands of domain

ontologies have been developed so far, only fewer

than a dozen known upper ontologies have been built

in the last three decades, with somewhat impact.

(Mascardi et al., 2006) provide a description and

comparison of 7 upper ontologies, namely: BFO,

Cyc, DOLCE, GFO, PROTON, SUMO and Sowa

(Sowa, 2005), which were the most referenced within

the research community at the time of their study. To

summarize the information, they have designed a

template with fields like: Status of this description;

Home page; Developers; Description; History;

Dimensions; Modularity; Applications; among

others. In addition, they also provide a summary of

existing comparisons drawn among subsets of the top

7 cited ontologies previously made by other authors.

Besides, (Guizzardi, 2005) developed UFO. It is

made up of three ontologies: UFO-A (endurants),

UFO-B (perdurants, or events) and UFO-C (social

entities, built on top of UFO-A and B). This ontology

was not preselected in the Mascardi et al.’s

comparison surely for chronological reasons.

Another contemporary initiative is COSMO,

which is an upper ontology that can serve to enable

broad general semantic interoperability. COSMO

development started as a merger of basic elements

from Cyc, SUMO, and DOLCE adding new features

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Figure 3: Excerpt from the SituationCO ontology with terms, properties and relationships enriched from ThingFO (TFO).

as well. Note that all the documentation of this open

project can be accessed at micra.com/COSMO/. Its

current OWL version has 24,059 types (classes), over

1,300 properties, and over 21,000 restrictions.

Some principles and quality criteria that benefit

the understandability, usefulness and potential

adoption of upper ontologies that guided the ThingFO

construction process are, namely: formal simplicity

and transparency promoting also the use of graphical

representations for the conceptualization; coverage

completeness but, at the same time, conciseness and

self-intuitiveness of the elements included; balanced

representation of both taxonomic and non-taxonomic

relationships; and, under the principle of modularity

and loose coupling, a clear delegation of

responsibilities to core ontologies. Some of these

quality criteria are in (D’Aquin and Gangemi, 2011).

In brief, qualitatively analysing the quoted

foundational ontologies, none of them simultaneously

satisfy all the above criteria. As for the numbers, the

smallest are Sowa (with 30 classes, 5 relationships

and 30 axioms), and BFO (36 classes linked via the

taxonomic relation is_a, which makes it a taxonomy

rather than an ontology). While the Cyc figures are

approximately 300,000 concepts, 3,000,000

assertions (facts and rules), and 15,000 relationships,

including in these numbers micro-theories. COSMO

numbers as mentioned above are also huge.

The foundational ontology that its

conceptualization is best represented graphically is

UFO, whereas most of the remainder use other formal

logic-based representations that are not easy to

convey and even to understand for many

stakeholders. On the other hand, frequently, a clear

delegation of responsibilities to core ontologies is not

observed. For example, among the BFO 36 classes,

are terms such as Process, Quality, Temporal region

(ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo/BFO2.png) that ThingFO

delegates to lower levels. Similarly, UFO is made up

of three ontologies at the upper level; however,

ThingFO is the single ontology at that level that

delegates the Event and Time issues at the core level.

Considering the terms, there is often a lack of

consensus on semantic matching. For example, the

DOLCE distinction between “endurant” and

“perdurant” does not fully correspond to that

established in GFO. Moreover, COSMO's great effort

began as a way to tackle the problem of semantic

interoperability by merging basic elements of Cyc,

SUMO and DOLCE, and adding new ones.

In building ThingFO, we have adhered to the

principles and quality criteria stated above. Its three

key terms are Thing (particular), Thing Category

(universal) and Assertion, which are used in the

ontologies at lower levels.

Lastly, it is worthy remarking that the types of

Assertions shown in Figure 2 are not represented in

this way in any of the quoted ontologies at the upper

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117

level. In summary, the figures for the current version

(v1.2) of ThingFO are 19 defined terms, 13 defined

properties, 3 specified axioms in first-order logic, and

12 defined non-taxonomic relationships that are well

balanced with the taxonomic ones.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This work has analysed ThingFO and its

applicability. It is an ontology for Particular and

Universal Things placed at the foundational level

regarding a five-tier ontological architecture. This

multitier architecture promotes a clear separation of

concerns by considering the ontological levels that

allow the allocation of components accordingly.

Since ThingFO is at the highest level, ontologies at

lower levels benefit from reusing or specializing its

three key terms, namely: Thing, Thing Category and

Assertion. So the main aim is to have a large number

of core and domain ontologies accessible under the

umbrella of this foundational ontology.

In order to analyse its applicability, this work has

illustrated the semantically enriched terms of the

SituationCO ontology, where they are, in turn, cross-

cutting concerns primarily for top-domain or low-

domain terminologies of any science. Particularly, to

show the applicability of ThingFO alongside this core

ontology, we have also addressed the mechanism to

not only enrich terms, but also to reuse and specialize

relationships for a top-domain software testing

ontology. Moreover, the non-taxonomic relationships

of SituationCO were verified for their correct

correspondence considering them as refinements (not

as subsets) of those of ThingFO. This exercise

allowed us to find a missing relationship (now called

defines) between the terms Thing and Assertion.

Last but not least, ThingFO was validated by two

external experts, outside the members of the present

research group. Based on their recommendations,

some changes were made to the conceptualization of

ThingFO. In short, their comments gave us evidence

of its potential utility. Moreover, the aforementioned

external experts, working on discrete event

simulation, after the validation effort, plan to adopt

ThingFO and populate FCD-OntoArch with new

ontologies for events and simulation. Ultimately, if,

as a produced artefact, the ThingFO ontology were

adopted step by step by the academia and industry,

this will be a promising fact of its utility and validity.

As future work, we are going to quantitatively

compare and evaluate the conceptualization of

ThingFO with a set of preselected conceptualized

foundational ontologies, considering the quality

criteria mentioned in the Discussion Section and

using the strategy illustrated in (Tebes et al., 2018).

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