Applied Ontologies

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies, i.e., formal ontological theories in the philosophical sense, to provide a theoretically sound foundation for improving the theory and practice of conceptual modeling. In this paper, we present advances on our re- search on the ontological foundations of conceptual modeling by addressing the concept of events. We present a foundational ontology of events (termed UFO- B) together with its axiomatization in first-order logic. Moreover, we report on an implementation of UFO-B using the computational logic language Alloy, and discuss its consistency, validation and possible uses.

— Ontologies play a key role in semantic interoperability projects, capturing the conceptualization underlying the various systems to be integrated. In the case of large information systems landscapes, a single monolithic ontology often becomes hard to design and maintain. In this setting, it is common to divide the ontological model in consistently interlinked modular ontologies, forming an ontology network. This paper explores the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) models in defining the ontologies in an ontology network. We report on an exploratory study in the scope of an e-Government interoperability project in the area of public security. In the reported study, an EA model provides guidance in the modularization of the ontology network.

Inspired by the need to understand the genomic aspects of COVID-19, the Viral Conceptual Model captures and represents the sequencing of viruses. Although the model has already been successfully used, it should have a strong ontological foundation to ensure that it can be consistently applied and expanded. We apply an ontological analysis of the Viral Conceptual Model, using OntoUML, to unpack and identify its core components. The analysis illustrates the feasibility of bringing ontological clarity to complex models. The process of revealing the ontological semantics of a data structuring model provides a fundamental type of explanation for symbolic models, including conceptual models.

The present study, part of an ongoing research, analyses some fundamental principles that aims to formulate textual and formal definitions to be used in ontologies. The goal of our study is to establish methodological guidelines for the formulation of definitions in biomedical ontologies, which are not so common in the field of Library & Information Science.