Applied Ontology

Here, I lay the foundations of a high-level ontology of particulars whose structuring principles differ radically from the ‘continuant’ vs. ‘occurrent’ distinction traditionally adopted in applied ontology. These principles are derived from a new analysis of the ontology of “occurring” or “happening” entities. Firstly, my analysis integrates recent work on the ontology of processes, which brings them closer to objects in their mode of existence and persistence by assimilating them to continuant particulars. Secondly, my analysis distinguishes clearly between processes and events, in order to make the latter abstract objects of thought (alongside propositions). Lastly, I open my ontological inventory to properties and facts, the existence of which is commonly admitted. By giving specific roles to these primitives, the framework allows one to account for static and dynamic aspects of the physical world and for the way that subjects conceive its history: facts account for the life of substances (physical objects and processes), whereas events enable cognitive subjects to account for the life story of substances.

Location ontologies axiomatize the relationship between physical bodies and the space that they occupy, and there is a rich literature on the philosophical underpinnings of these ontologies. Existing location ontologies have given primacy to the structure of what might be called abstract space. Consequently, the spatial properties and relations between physical bodies are extracted from the spatial properties and relations of the spatial regions that they occupy. In this paper, we take a different approach by beginning with the philosophical position of mereological pluralism, in which there are different mereologies for different kinds of entities. In particular, we make the fundamental ontological commitment that the mereology for spatial regions is different than the mereology for physical bodies. Different intuitions about location and different classes of physical bodies can be formally specified by imposing different conditions on this mapping, thus leading to different possible location ontologies. We propose an axiomatization of a location ontology and characterize the models of the axiomatization, up to isomorphism, by providing a representation theorem with respect to graph and poset homomorphisms.

Global ontologies include common vocabularies to provide interoperability among different applications. These ontologies require a balance of reusability-usability to minimise the ontology reuse effort in different applications. To achieve such a balance, reusable and usable ontology design methodologies provide guidelines to design and develop layered ontology networks. Layered ontology networks classify into different abstraction layers the domain knowledge relevant to many applications (common domain knowledge) and the domain knowledge relevant only to certain application types (variant domain knowledge). This knowledge classification is performed from scratch by domain experts and ontology engineers. This process is a heavy workload, making it difficult to design the layered structures of reusable and usable global ontologies. Considering how common and variant software features are classified when designing Software Product Lines (SPLs), we argue that SPL engineering techniques can facilitate the domain knowledge classification taking as reference existing ontologies. This paper presents a methodology that provides guidelines to design the layered structure of reusable and usable ontology networks called MODDALS. In contrast to previous methods, MODDALS applies SPL engineering techniques to systematically (1) identify the ontology common and variant domain knowledge and (2) classify it into different abstraction layers taking as reference existing ontologies. This approach complements domain experts’ and ontology engineers’ expertise, preventing them from classifying the domain knowledge from scratch facilitating the design of the layered ontology structure. MODDALS methodology is evaluated in the design of the layered structure of a reusable and usable global ontology for the energy domain. The results show that MODDALS enables to classify the domain knowledge taking as reference existing ontologies.

It is known that the aging process entails a cognitive decline in certain processes such as attention, episodic memory, working memory, processing speed and executive functions. In recent years, efforts have been made to investigate the potential of Information and Communication Technologies to improve cognitive functioning and quality of life in older adults with and without cognitive impairments. In this paper, we propose the Aging Neuro-Behaviour Ontology (ANBO), a formal model of cognitive processes involved in day-to-day living and whose performance usually decline with age. ANBO has been created with the aim of being an aid in developing tools for cognitive rehabilitation by means of integrating aging-related behaviors with monitoring activities of daily living. As an example of these tools, we introduce an integration of ANBO with the Ontology SmartLab Elderly (OSLE), an ontology related with Telehealth Smart Homes wherein activities of daily living are recorded. This ANBO and OSLE integration enable the interpretation of these activities as the result of cognitive processes of interest in the domain of elderly decline.