Source: http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/old/Publications.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 10:09:22+00:00

Document:
List of publications on the pages of the ISTC: here.
Most of the papers available from this web-site appear in print, and the corresponding copyright is held by the publisher. While the papers can be used for personal use, redistribution or reprinting for commercial purposes is prohibited.
In IEEE Design and Test of Computers, 28(5):110-111, IEEE Computer Society Press, Sep./Oct. 2011 (doi:10.1109/MDT.2011.111).
Lorini, E.; Troquard, N.; Herzig, A.; Broersen, J.
To appear in Logic Journal of the IGPL.
Herzig, A.; Lorini, E.; Troquard, N.
In 12th International Workshop on Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems (CLIMA XII @IJCAI'11), Barcelona, Spain. Volume 6814 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), pages 295-311. Springer, 2011.
Borgo, S.; Franssen, M.; Garbacz, P.; Kitamura, Y.; Mozoguchi, R.; Vermaas, P.E.
In Formal Ontologies Meet Industry - Proceedings of FOMI 2011, P.E. Vermaas and V. Dignum (Eds.), pp. 3-15, FAIA, IOS Press, 2011.
In the Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Science (EuroCog 2011), New Bulgarian University, Sofia, May 21-24, 2011.
Ferrario, R.; Janiesch, C.; Guarino, N.; Oberle, D.; Probst, F.
In the Proceedings of Wirtschaftsinformatik, Zurich, Switzerland, February 16-18, 2011.
Towards an Ontological Foundations for Services Science: the Legal Perspective.
Ferrario, R.; Guarino, N.; Fernandez Barrera, M. E.
In G. Sartor, P. Casanovas, M. Biasiotti, M. Fernandez Barrera (eds.), Approaches to Legal Ontologies, Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol.1, Springer Verlag, 2011, pp. 235-258.
The design stance and its artefacts.
Vermaas, P.E.; Carrara, M.; Borgo, S.; Garbacz, P.
(Forthcoming in) ECAP 7, Seventh European Conference of Analytic Philosophy. Milan, Italy 1-6 September 2011.
On The Ontology of Functions.
Borgo, S.; Mizoguchi, R.; Smith, B.
To appear in Applied Ontology (Introduction to the special issue on functions).
The Review of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 3(4): 521 - 567.
(Forthcoming in) Democracy Today, 3-4 November 2010, Braga (Portugal).
Gaio, S.; Borgo, S.; Masolo, C.; Oltramari, A.; Guarino, N.
AIDAinformazioni, Anno 28 gennaio-giugno, Numero 1-2/2010 (Pages 107 - 125).
(Forthcoming in) Proc. of Collective Intentionality 2010, August 23-26, Basel (Switzerland).
Proc. of EASST 2010, September 2-4, Trento, Italy.
Borgo, S.; Carrara, M.; Garbacz, P. and Vermaas P.E.
Hove, H. and Galle, P. (eds.), Copenhagen Working Papers on Design (series), Vol. 1 - p. 39-40, Danish Design School Press.
In Galton, A. and Mizoguchi, R. (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems (FOIS 2010), p.89-102. IOS Press.
In Lin, F. and Sattler, U. (eds.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2010), p.258-268, AAAI Press.
In Horvath, I; Mandorli, F. and Rusak, Z. (eds.): Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering TMCE 2010, Vol. 1, Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering (Delft University of Technology), pp. 113-126. April 12-16, Ancona, Italy.
Huang, Calzolari, Gangemi, Lenci, Oltramari, Prevot (editors).
PhD thesis, Universita' degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Filosofia, defended on January 27th, 2010, Torino, Italy. Advisor: Germana Pareti - University of Torino; Committee: Federico Vercellone - University of Torino, Luca Vanzago - University of Pavia, Paolo Di Lucia - University of Milano, Nicola Guarino - LOA, ISTC-CNR.
Generating innovation with semantically enabled TasLab portal.
(Forthcoming in) Proc. of LREC 2010 (7th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation), May 17-23, Valletta, Malta.
Data-driven and Ontological Analysis of FrameNet for Natural Language Processing.
Ovchinnikova; Vieu, L.; Oltramari, A.; Borgo, S.; Alexandrov, T.
From Data to Knowledge Objects, Ontological Considerations With Inputs From the Public Health Domain.
Pozza, G.; Borgo, S.; Ravarotto, L.
In 10th European Conference on Knowledge Management, Academic Conferences International (ACI), 2009.
The intentionalist design stance and its object.
Borgo, S.; Carrara, M.; Garbacz, P.; Vermaas, P.E.
In Biennal Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, pp. 207-208, Enschede (NL), 2009.
In Formal Ontologies Meet Industry - Proceedings of FOMI 2009, R. Ferrario, A. Oltramari (Eds.), pp. 90-101, IOS Press 2009.
Proceedings of FOMI 2009 - Preface.
In Formal Ontologies Meet Industry, pp. v-viii, IOS Press 2009.
Arbitral Functions and Constitutive Rules.
The Ontological Level: Revisiting 30 Years of Knowledge Representation.
In Alex Borgida, Vinay Chaudhri, Paolo Giorgini, Eric Yu (eds.),Ë† Conceptual Modelling: Foundations and Applications, Springer Verlag 2009: 52-67.
Guarino, N., Oberle, D., and Staab, S.
In S. Staab and R. Studer (eds.), Handbook on Ontologies, Second Edition. International handbooks on information systems. Ë†Ã¤Springer Verlag: 201-221.
An introduction to Ontoclean (revised version).
Guarino, N. and Welty, C.
In S. Staab and R. Studer (eds.), Handbook on Ontologies, Second Edition. International handbooks on information systems. Springer Verlag: 1-17.
A Formal Ontological Perspective on the Behaviors and Functions of Technical Artifacts.
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AIEDAM), 2009, 23, 3-21.
Towards the Ontological Representation of Functional Basis in DOLCE.
In M. Okada and B. Smith (eds.), Interdisciplinary Ontology Vol. 2, Proceedings of the 2nd Interdisciplinary ontology Meeting. Feb. 28th - March 1st, 2009, Tokyo, Japan.
Euclidean and Mereological Qualitative Spaces: a Study of SCC and DCC.
To appear in the Proceedings of the Twenty-first International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI 2009, Pasadena, California (USA), July 11-17, 2009.
Parthood Simpliciter vs. Temporary Parthood .
In the proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning (Commonsense 2009), Lakemeyer, G., Morgenstern, L., Williams, M. A. (eds.), Toronto, Canada, June 1-3 2009, p. 97-102.
Preliminaries to a DOLCE Ontology of Organizations.
In C. Atkinson, E. Kendall, G. Wagner, G. Guizzardi, M. Spies (eds), International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, Special Issue on Vocabularies, Ontologies and Business Rules for Enterprise Modeling, vol. 4, nr. 4, Inderscience Publishers, 2009, pp. 225-238.
Towards an Ontological Foundations for Services Science.
In D. Fensel, and P. Traverso (eds.), Future Internet - FIS 2008, Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5468, Berlin Heidelberg 2009, pp. 152-169.
A New Ontological Perspective for Social Services.
In Corradini, F., and Polzonetti, A. (eds.), MeTTeG08, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Methodologies, Technologies and Tools Enabling e-Government, Halley, pp.41-51.
The Impact of Technology in Organizational Communication.
To appear in Staudinger B., Hoess V., and Ostermann H. (eds.), Nursing and Clinical Informatics: Socio-Technical Approaches, IGI Global.
Evaluating Procedural Alternatives: a case study in e-Voting.
Bryl V., Dalpiaz F., Ferrario R., Mattioli A., Villafiorita A.
To appear in Electronic Government, an International Journal, Inderscience Publishers.
Artefacts and Roles: Modelling Strategies in a Multiplicative Ontology.
To appear In Proceedings of FOIS 2008, IOS Press.
Lexicon and Ontology Interplay in Senso Comune.
In Proceedings of OntoLex 2008 (Hosted by Sixth international conference on Language Resources and Evaluation), Marrakech (Morocco).
Enriching Ontologies with Linguistic Content: An Evaluation Framework.
Artale, A.; Guarino, N.; Keet, M. C.
To appear in G. Brewka, J. Lang (eds.), KR 2008: Eleventh International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Sydney, Australia, September 16-19, 2008.
The Attractiveness of FoundationalË†Ã¤Ontologies in Industry.
in Formal Ontologies Meet Industry (FOMI), S. Borgo and L. Lesmo (Eds.), FAIA 174, IOS Press, pp. 1-9 (2008).
Abductive Reasoning, Interpretation and Collaborative Processes.
in corso di pubblicazione in Foundations of Science, Special Issue on Tracking Irrational Sets: Science, Technology, Ethics. Springer, Netherlands, 2008.
Integrating Agent-Oriented Modeling Languages Using a Foundational Ontology.
Guizzardi, R. S. S.; Guizzardi, G.
In Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering, P. Giorgini, N. Maiden, J. Mylopoulos, E. Yu (eds.), Cooperative Information Systems Series, MIT Press, USA, 2008 (To appear).
Using the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) as a Foundation for General Conceptual Modeling Languages.
In Theory and Application of Ontologies, R. Poli (editor), Springer-Verlag, Germania, 2008. (To appear).
Grounding Software Domain Ontologies in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO): The case of the ODE Software Process Ontology.
In proceedings of 1th Iberoamerican Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Software Environments (IDEAS'2008), Recife, Brazil. 2008 (To appear).
FrameWeb and S-FrameWeb: A Framework Based Methodology for Agile Web Engineering with Semantic Web Support.
Souza, V. E. S.; Falbo, R. A.; Guizzardi, G.
In Innovations in Information Systems Modeling: Methods and Best Practices, E. Proper, J. Krogstie and T. Halpin (editors), IGI Global Book, USA. 2008 (To appear).
Editorial of the Special Issue on Ontological Foundations for Conceptual Modeling.
Journal of Applied Ontology, IOS Press, Amsterdam. 2008 (To appear).
Extended Editorial of the Special Issue on Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for The Enterprise.
International Journal on Business Process Integration and Management, InterScience Press. 2008 (To appear).
Extended Editorial of the Special Issue on Ontologies and Business Process Modeling.
Gazevic, D.; Taveter, K.; Wagner, G.; Guizzardi, G.
Information Systems Journal, Elsevier, 2009. (To appear).
ECG provisioning system for telehomecare monitoring, Computer Applications in Health Care.
Goncalves, B. N.; Filho, J. G. P.; AndreÂ¬Ã£o, R. V.; Guizzardi, G.
23rd ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Fortazela, Brazil, 2008. (To appear).
A Service Architecture for Sensor Data Provisioning for Context-Aware Mobile Applications.
Goncalves, B. N.; Guizzardi, G.; Filho, J. G. P.
Mobile Computing and Applications, 23rd ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Fortazela, Brazil, 2008. (To appear).
Cardoso, E.; Almeida, J. P. A.; Guizzardi, G.
11th Iberoamerican Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Software Environments (IDEAS'2008), Recife, Brazil. 2008 (To appear).
Borgo, S.; Ferrario, R.; Masolo, C.; Oltramari, A.
In Image - Journal of Interdisciplinary Image Science, vol. 5 , Chapter 3 of the thematic section Computational Visualistics and Pictorial Morphology, Herbert-von-Halem, Koln 2007, pp. 36-49.
Quantificational Modal Operators and Their Semantics.
In Interactive Logic, Johan van Benthem, Dov Gabbay, Benedikt Lowe (eds.): Texts in Logic and Games 1. AmsterdamË†Ã¤University Press 2007, pp. 49 - 69.
Formal Ontologies for Communicating Agents.
In Applied Ontology n. 3-4, pp. 209-216, 2007.
In Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI 2007, Hyderabad, India, 6-12 January 2007 (p. 1822-1827).
Problemi filosofici emergenti dalla modellazione delle organizzazioni sociali.
In Rivista di Estetica, vol. 36 Issue 3, DocumentalitÂ¬Ã : l'ontologia degli oggetti sociali, 2007. pp. 43-58.
Designing Organizations: Towards a Model.
Bottazzi, E.; Ferrario, R.; Masolo, C.; Trypuz, R.
In Normative Multi-agent Systems, Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, IBFI, Dagstuhl, Germany, March 18-23 2007, Eds.: Boella, G.; van der Torre, L.; Verhagen, H., pp. 267-244.
Gli effetti dei sistemi informativi sui processi di comunicazione: un caso di studio.
Cuel, R.; Ferrario, R.; Camussone, P.F.
In Relazioni di lavoro e forme organizzative. Nuovi modelli di progettazione, Carocci, Roma, 2007. Pp. 268-284. Eds.: Fabbri, T.M.; Golzio, L.E.
Evaluating Procedural Alternatives. A Case Study in e-Voting.
Bryl, V.; Dalpiaz, F.; Ferrario, R.; Mattioli, A.; Villafiorita, A.
In MeTTeG07. Proceedings of the 1st International Conferente on Methodologies, Technologies and Tools Enabling e-Government, Halley. Matelica (MC), Italy, 2007. Pp. 125-138. Eds.: Corradini, F.; Polzonetti, A.
On non mediated Collective Intentions.
Bottazzi, E.; Catenacci, C.; Ferrario, R.; Trypuz, R.
In Narrative Alternatives to Theories of Mind, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield (UK), July, 12-15, 2007.
Ontological Modularity and Spatial Diversity.
Bateman, J.; Borgo, S.; Luettich, K.; Masolo, C.; Mossakowski, T.
In SPATIAL COGNITION AND COMPUTATION, Special issue on Cognitive Semantics and Spatio-Temporal Ontologies. Vol. 7, No. 1: pages 97-128. 2007.
How Formal Ontology can help Civil Engineers. Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontologies for Urban Development.
In Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer, pp. 37 - 45. 2007.
Foundations for a Core Ontology of Manufacturing.
Borgo, S. and Leitao, P.
In Ontologies: A Handbook of Principles, Concepts and Applications in Information Systems. Sharman, Raj; Kishore, Rajiv; Ramesh, Ram (Eds.), Integrated Series in Information Systems, Vol. 14, pp. 751-776, Springer. 2007. ISBN 0-387-37019-6.
Solving Bratman's Video Game Puzzle in Two Formalisms.
Trypuz, R.; Lorini, E.; and Vieu, L.
In ILCLI International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy of Knowledge, Communication and Action (LogKCA-07), J. M. Larrazabal ed., Donostia: The University of the Basque Country Press, p. 411-426.
An Ontology of the Aspectual Classes of Actions.
Trypuz, R. and Vieu, L.
In ILCLI International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy of Knowledge, Communication and Action (LogKCA-07), J. M. Larrazabal ed., Donostia: The University of the Basque Country Press, p. 393-409.
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (Decalog 2007).
Artstein, R. and Vieu, L.
Rovereto, Italy, 30/05/2007 - 01/06/2007, University of Trento.
Proceedings of the 6th international and interdisciplinary conference (CONTEXT 2007): Modeling and Using Context..
Kokinov, B.; Richardson, D.; Roth-Berghoferand, T. and Vieu, L.
Roskilde, Denmark, 20/08/2007 - 24/08/2007, Springer-Verlag, LNAI 4635, august 2007.
The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition.
Aurnague, M.; Hickmann, M. and Vieu, L.
John Benjamins Publishing Company, V. 20, Human Cognitive Processing, 2007.
Introduction: Searching for the categorization of spatial entities.
Hickmann, M.; Vieu, L. and Aurnague, M.
In The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition; Aurnague, M.; Hickmann, M. and Vieu, L. (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 01-32, 2007.
In The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition; Aurnague, M.; Hickmann, M. and Vieu, L. (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 307-336, 2007.
Categorizing Spatial Entities with Frontal Orientation: the Role of Function, Motion and Saliency in the Processing of the French Internal Localization Nouns avant/devant.
Aurnague, M.; Champagne, M.; Vieu, L.; Borillo, A.; Muller, P.
In The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition; Aurnague, M.; Hickmann, M. and Vieu, L. (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 153-175, 2007.
Setting the Background in Discourse.
Asher, N.; Prevot, L. and Vieu, L.
Modal Aspects of Object Types and Part-Whole Relations and the de re/de dicto distinction.
John Krogstie, Andreas L. Opdahl, Guttorm Sindre (Eds.): Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Proceedings of 19th International Conference, CAiSE 2007, Trondheim, Norway, June 11-15, 2007. Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4495 (pp. 5- 20), ISBN 978-3-540-72987-7.
On Ontology, ontologies, Conceptualizations, Modeling Languages, and (Meta)Models, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Databases and Information Systems IV.
Olegas Vasilecas, Johan Edler, Albertas Caplinskas (Editors). ISBN 978-1-58603-640-8, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2007.
An Ontological Account of Agent Oriented Goals.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 4408, pp. 148-164.
Ricardo Choren, Alessandro F. Garcia, Holger Giese, Ho-fung Leung, Carlos JosÂ¬Ã© Pereira de Lucena, Alexander B. Romanovsky (Eds.): Software Engineering for Multi-Agent Systems V, Research Issues and Practical Applications. ISBN 978-3-540-73130-6. Springer-Verlag, Germany, 2007.
On the Foundation for Roles in RM-ODP: Contributions from Conceptual Modelling.
Almeida, J. P. A.;Guizzardi, G.
In Proceedings of 4th International Workshop on ODP for Enterprise Computing (WODPEC 2007), IEEE International EDOC Conference (EDOC 2007), Maryland, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press.
COReS: Context-aware, Ontology-based Recommender system for Service recommendation.
Costa, A. C.; Guizzardi, R. S. S.; Guizzardi, G.; Filho, J. G. P.
In Proceedings of Workshop on Ubiquitous Mobile Information and Collaboration Systems (UMICS'07), 19th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAISE'07), Trondheim, 2007.
A Language for Modeling Framework-based Web Information Systems.
Souza, V. E. S.; Falbo, R.; Guizzardi, G.
In Proceedings of International EMMSAD Workshop, 19th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAISE'07), Trondheim, 2007.
S-FrameWeb: a Framework Based Design Method for Web Engineering with Semantic Web Support.
Souza, V. E. S.; LourenÂ¬Ã§o, T. W.; Falbo, R.; Guizzardi, G.
In Proceedings of International Workshop on Web Information Systems Modeling (WISM), 19th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAISE'07), Trondheim, 2007.
An Electrocardiogram (ECG) Domain Ontology.
Nunes, B. G.; Guizzardi, G.; Filho, J. G. P.
In Proceedings of the Second Brazilian Workshop on Ontologies and Metamodels for Software and Data Engineering (WOMSDE'07), 22nd Brazilian Symposium on Databases (SBBD)/21st Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES), JoÂ¬Ã£o Pessoa, Brazil, 2007.
Evolving a Software Configuration Ontology.
Arantes, L. O.; Falbo, R. A.; Guizzardi, G.
Proceedings of the Second Brazilian Workshop on Ontologies and Metamodels for Software and Data Engineering (WOMSDE'07).
The Cognitive Matrix: an hybrid perspective on mind.
Extended Abstract in Proc. of International Conference "Towards a Science of Consciousness(TSC2007), 23-26 luglio 2007, Budapest, Ungheria.
Ontology of Actions and Mental Entities.
Trypuz, R.; Oltramari, A.; Vieu, L.
Extended Abstract in Proc. of Workshop on Concepts, Actions and Objects: Functional and Neural Perspectives, 19-22 Aprile 2007, Rovereto (TN), Italy.
On Blocking: The Rhetorical Aspects of Content-Level Discourse Relations and Their Semantics.
In Language, Representation and Reasoning. Memorial Volume to Isabel Gomez Txurruka, M. Aurnague. K. Korta and J. M. Larrazabal (eds.). Bilbao: University of Basque Country Press, pp. 263--282. 2007.
Ontology of Organizations and Security .
Bottazzi E., Ferrario R., Masolo C.
MOSTRO deliverable D3, (final version), 42 p., 2007.
An Ontological View of Organizations.
Borgo, S.; Bottazzi, E.; Ferrario, R.; De Nicola, A,; Guarino, N.; Masolo, C.; Missikoff, M.; Tininini, L.; Vieu, L.
TOCAI Deliverable D6.1, pp. 1 - 63. 2007.
Ontology of Agency. From Modal Logics to First-Order Theories.
Troquard, N.; Trypuz, R.; Vieu, L.
In Studia Logica International Conference - Towards Mathematical Philosophy - Trends in Logic IV, Torun Poland, 1-4 September 2006.
Borgo, S.; Cristani, M., Cuel, R.
In Applied Ontology 1 (3-4), pp. 217-220. 2006. Borgo, Stefano; Cristani, Matteo; Cuel, Roberta Eds.
The unexpected high practical value of medical ontologies.
In Computers in Biology and Medicine, 2006, Jul-Aug; 36(7-8): 669-73.
Eccher, C.; Purin, B.; Pisanelli, D.M.; Battaglia, M.; Apolloni, I.;Forti, S.
In Computers in Biology and Medicine, 2006, Jul-Aug; 36(7-8): 789-801.
Modelling in the study of interaction of Hemopump device and artificial ventilation.
De Lazzari, C.; Darowski, M.; Ferrari, G.; Pisanelli, D.M.; Tosti, G.
In Computers in Biology and Medicine, 2006.
Right ventricular assistance by continuous flow device: A numerical simulation.
De Lazzari, C.; Ferrari, G.; Darowski, M.; Pisanelli, D. M.; Tosti, G. C.
In Proceeding of the 24th IASTED International Conference BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, Innsbruck (Austria), February 15-17 2006. BioMED_2006, Pp. 98-102.
The Impact of Rotary Blood Pump in Conjuction with Mechanical Ventilation on Ventricular Energetic Parameters: Numerical Simulation.
In Methods of Information in Medicine, 45-(4).
Towards a logic of agency and actions with duration.
In European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2006 (ECAI'06), Riva del Garda, Italy, IOS Press, p. 775-776, August 2006.
Qood grid: A metaontology-based framework for ontology evaluation and selection.
Gangemi, A.; Catenacci, C.; Ciaramita, M.; Lehmann, J.
In Proceedings of EON 2006.
Ontology-based modelling of legal concepts.
In Proceedings of Approaching the Multilanguage Complexity of European Law: Methodologies in Comparison, Fiesole (FI) Italy, European University Institute, 17 November 2006.
From Collective Intentionality to Intentional Collectives: an Ontological Perspective.
Bottazzi, E.; Catenacci, C.; Gangemi, A.; Lehmann, J.
In Cognitive System Research - Special Issue on Cognition, Joint Action and Collective Intentionality, Vol. 7, Issue 2-3, Pp. 192-208.
In Atti de Secondo Convegno dell'Associazione Italiana di Scienze Cognitive. Scienze Cognitive e Robotica, Genova (Italy), 26-27 October, 2006. Pp. 136-138. Eds.: Greco, A.; Penco, C.; Sandini, G.; Zaccaria, R.
Passi Preliminari verso una Dolce ontologia delle organizzazioni.
In Networks, Vol. 6, pp. 36-63.
Pensieri e Rappresentazioni di Elisabetta Sacchi.
In 2R, Vol. 2, 2006. Pp. 95-105.
Special Issue on Applied Ontology.
Eds.: Borgo, S.; Cristani, M.; Cuel, R.
Development of Modular Ontologies in CASL.
Luettich, K.; Masolo, C.; Borgo, S.
In Proceedings of International Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WoMO), Athens (Georgia, USA), 05 November 2006.
From Physical Artefacts to Products.
In Proceedings of Second Workshop FOMI, Trento (Italy) 14-15 december, 2006. pp. 85-99.
On the transitivity of functional parthood.
In Applied Ontology Vol. 1, Issue 2. Pages: 147-155.
Adverbiaux de localisation comme introducteurs de topiques de discours.
Vieu, L.; Bras, M.; Le Draoulec, A.; Asher, N.
In Proceedings of Journees de Semantique et Modelisation (Bourdeaux, 2006), Eds.: Nicolas, D.; Retore, C.
Clinical Guidelines as Plans: An Ontological Theory.
Kumar A.; Smith, B.; Pisanelli, D.M.; Gangemi, A.; Stefanelli, M.
Series Title Methods of Information in Medicine, Pp. 204-210.
Towards an ontology of agency and action: From STIT to OntoSTIT+.
Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference FOIS 2006, Baltimore, Maryland (USA), November 9-11 2006 (version corrected).
in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference FOIS 2006, Baltimore, Maryland (USA), November 9-11 2006. Publisher: IOS Press (Amsterdam). Eds.: Bennet, B.; Fellbaum, C.
Behaviour of a Technical Artifact: An Ontological Perspective in Engineering.
Borgo, S.; Carrara, M.; Vermaas, P.E.; Garbacz, P.
In Defence of a Trope-Based Ontology for Conceptual Modeling: An example with the foundations of Attributes, Weak Entities an Datatypes.
Guizzardi, G.; Masolo, C.; Borgo, S.
in Proceedings of Proceedings of the ER Conference 2006, 6-9 November 2006, Tucson (Arizona, USA). Publisher: Springer. LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, volume 4215, pp. 112-125.
Broad-Coverage Sense Disambiguation and Information Extraction with a Supersense Sequence Tagger.
In Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2006). 2006.
LexiPass methodology: a conceptual path from frames to senses and back.
In Proceedings of LREC 2006 (Fifth international conference on Language Resources and Evaluation), Genoa (Italy).
Modelling Ontology Evaluation and Validation.
In Proceedings of ESWC2006, Springer.
Deliverable 3 (Final). General Ontology of Artefacts Including Subontology of Information Objects.
Deliverable 2. Ontology of Information Objects.
Deliverable 1. General Ontology of Artefacts.
To appear in Proceedings of the 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2006).
Who Cares about Axiomatization? Representation, Invariance, and Formal Ontologies.
in Epistemologia, Special Issue on the Philosophy of Patrick Suppes, vol. 2, pp. 323-342. 2006.
In Networks - Numero Speciale su Ontologia, Num. 6/2006.
Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Volume 18, pp. 115-126.
Intelligenza Artificiale, Volume 3, pp. 19-25 (Special Issue for the 50th AI Anniversary).
Networks, Volume 6, pp. 36-63.
Proceedings of Workshop on actions, Toulouse (FR), 2006.
Proceedings of Trends in Logic: Towards mathematical philosophy, Pp. 53-54. Torun (PL), 2006.
Proceedings of LE ONTOLOGIE IN CAMPO UMANISTICO: ARCHEOLOGIA, ARCHITETTURA E BENI CULTURALI, Firenze (IT), 2006.
The Dynamic Nature of Meaning.
in L. Magnani, R. Dossena (eds.), Computing, Philosophy, And Cognition, College Publications, pp. 295-312, 2005.
Computers in Biology and Medicine, Special issue on Medical Ontologies.
Theoretical and practical aspects of interfacing ontologies and lexical resources.
Oltramari, A.; Prevot, L.; Borgo, S.
In Proceedings of SWAP2005 (to appear).
In Proceedings of SWAP2005 (Springer).
CausatiOnt: Modeling Causation in AI&Law..
Lehmann, J.; Breuker, J.; Brouwer, P.
In V.R. Benjamins, P. Casanovas, J. Breuker, and A.Gangemi, editors, Law and the Semantic Web, pages 77 - 96, Springer, 2005.
Agent Roles, Qua Individuals and The Counting Problem.
In Software Engineering of Multi-Agent Systems, edited by P. Giorgini, A. Garcia, C. Lucena and R. Chores. Springer-Verlag, 2005. LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE, volume 3914, pp. 143-163.
Ontology Design Patterns for Semantic Web Content.
Musen et al. (eds.): Proceedings of the Fourth International Semantic Web Conference, Springer, 2005.
A Constructive Framework for Legal Ontologies.
Gangemi, A.; Sagri, M.T.; Tiscornia, D.
In Legal Ontologies and the Semantic Web, edited by V.R. Benjamins, J. Breuker, P. Casanovas and A. Gangemi. Springer Verlag, 2005.
Towards an Ontology-based Distributed Architecture for Paid Content.
Behrendt, W.; Gangemi, A.; Maass, W.; Westenthaler, R.
In A Gomez-Perez, J Euzenat (eds.): Proceedings of the Second European Semantic Web Conference, Springer, 2005.
La langue classifie-t-elle les entites spatiales?.
Aurnague, M.; Maya, H.; Vieu, L.
In Agir dans l'Espace, edited by C. Thinus-Blanc and J. Bullier. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2005.
Vieu, L.; Bras, M.; Asher, N.; Aurnague, M.
In Journal of French Language Studies (2005). Pages: 173-193.
Applied Ontology: Focusing on Content.
Subordinating and Coordinating Discourse Relations.
Lingua, Special Issue on "Coordination: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics". 115(4) (2005): 591-610.
Lehmann, J.; Biasiotti, M.A.; Francesconi, E.; Sagri, M.A..
Special issue on Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques.
Proceedings of LOAIT Workshop - Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques.
In IAAIL Workshop Series, WOLF Legal Publisher, Nijmegen, 2005 (ISBN 90-5850-504-9, ISSN 1871-1235).
November 1 - 2 2005, Springer LNCS .
Masolo, C.; Guizzardi, G.; Vieu, L.; Bottazzi, E.; Ferrario, R.
November 3-6, 2005, Hyatt Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia.
Named-Entity Recognition in Novel Domains with External Lexical Knowledge.
In Workshop on Advances in Structured Learning for Text and Speech Processing (NIPS 2005).
Proceedings of the International EDOC Workshop on Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for The Enterprise (VORTE' 05), 9th IEEE EDOC (Enterprise Distributed Object Computing) Conference.
An Ontology-Based Approach for Evaluating the Domain Appropriateness and Comprehensibility Appropriateness of Modeling Languages.
Guizzardi, G.; Ferreira Pires, L.; van Sinderen, M.
In ACM/IEEE 8th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 2005. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS 3713, Springer-Verlag.
Ontology-Based Evaluation and Desing of Domain-Specific Visual Modeling Languages.
In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Systems Development, Karlstad, Sweden, 2005.
Measuring Web-Corpus Randomness: A Progress Report.
In Marco Baroni and Silvia Bernardini (eds.) WaCky! Working Papers on the Web as Corpus. Bologna: Gedit (2005).
A Path to an Ontology of Organizations.
in Guizzardi, G., Wagner, G., Proceedings of International EDOC Workshop on Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for The Enterprise (VORTE 2005), Center for Telematics and Information Technology, Enschede, The Netherlands, 2005, pp 9-16.
Abstract. This paper presents a preliminary proposal of an ontology of organizations based on DOLCE (Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering). An ontological analysis of organizations is the first, fundamental and ineliminable pillar on which to build a precise and rigourous enterprise modelling. An ontological analysis makes explicit the social structure that underlies every organizational settings. In particular, the paper tries to explain what are organizations, roles and norms, how they are interrelated, what it means for a norm to be valid in an organization and what it means for an agent to be affiliated to an organization.
From Coalition Logic to STIT.
Broersen, J.; Herzig, A.; Troquard, N.
In Proceedings of the 3rd Int. Workshop on Logic and Communication in Multiagent Systems (LCMAS 2005). Edinburgh, Scotland, Volume 157, Wiebe van der Hoek, Alessio Lomuscio, Erik de Vink, Mike Wooldridge (Eds.), Elsevier, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 4, p. 23-35, May 2005.
Abstract. STIT is a logic of agency that has been proposed in the nineties in the domain of philosophy of action. It is the logic of constructions of the form ``agent a sees to it that F''. We believe that STIT theory may contribute to the logical analysis of multiagent systems. To support this claim, in this paper we show that there is a close relationship with more recent logics for multiagent systems. We focus on Pauly's Coalition Logic and the logic of the cstit operator, as described by Horty. After a brief presentation of Coalition Logic and an adapted discrete-time STIT framework, we introduce a translation from Coalition Logic to STIT, and prove that it is correct.
Interfacing Ontologies and Lexical Resources.
Prevot, L.; Borgo, S.; Oltramari, A.
In OntoLex 2005 - Ontologies and Lexical Resources: IJCNLP-05 Workshop - October 15, 2005; Jeju Island, South Korea. Pages 1-12.
In the proceedings of the Ws Foundational Aspects of Ontologies (FOnt 2005), Koblenz, Germany, Sept. 2005.
Abstract. Abstract. We characterize and compare four different ways of representing qualities in formal ontology. Our goal is to discuss their ontological commitments and their adequacy in applications. We also show how the frameworks here presented relate to other approaches in ontology (trope theory), in cognitive science (conceptual spaces), and in physics (International System of Units). The work we present focuses on ontological construction; we do not discuss issues specifically related to measurements, metrics and the like.
Modal Operators with Adaptable Semantics for Multi-agent Systems.
In the proceedings of the 9th Congress of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, Milano (Italy), Sept. 21-23 2005. Pages 186-197.
Abstract.We look at extensions of modal logic for representation and reasoning in the area of multi-agent systems. Building on dynamic logic and Henkin quantifiers, we study an unusual type of operators that present important features for capturing concurrency, independence, collaboration, and coordination between agents. The main goal of this paper is to study the semantics of these operators and to show how it can be adapted to capture different types of agents. The formalism allows a formal comparison of a variety of multi-agent systems.
in Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics. Volume 15 - No. 2/2005, pp. 137-188.
Abstract. We introduce quantificational modal operators as dynamic modalities with (extensions of) Henkin quantifiers as indices. The adoption of matrices of indices (with action identifiers, variables and/or quantified variables as entries) gives an expressive formalism which is here motivated with examples from the area of multi-agent systems. We study the formal properties of the resulting logic which, formally speaking, does not satisfy the normality condition. However, the logic admits a semantics in terms of (an extension of) Kripke structures. As a consequence, standard techniques for normal modal logic become available. We apply these to prove completeness and decidability, and to extend some standard frame results to this logic.
Speech Acts, Discourse Structure and Public Commitments.
Maudet, N.; Muller, P.; Prevot, L.
in 9th International Pragmatics Conference, Riva del Garda (Italy), July 10-15th 2005.
The discourse function of final rises in French dialogues.
Muller, P.; Prevot, L.; Safarova, M.
in 9th workshop on semantics and pragmatics of dialogue (DIALOR), Nancy, June 2005.
in Workshop on Constraints in Discourse, 3-5 June, 2005, Dortmund, Germany.
Gangemi A., Borgo S., Catenacci C., Lehmann J.
Abstract. This is a deliverable of the EU FP6 project Metokis . It concerns the logical and ontological foundation of so-called task taxonomies for knowledge content. Task taxonomies are graphs that create an ordering over sets of action types. Task taxonomies are mainly used in so-called workflow management systems. Knowledge content objects are (materialized) information objects that are tagged by means of metadata, and are the target elements of library management and the semantic web. In Metokis, the two concepts match for the scope of the project: building a demonstration platform that allows a formal definition of certain types (mainly digital) of knowledge content objects (news, clinical data, management documents, etc.), in conjunction with a formal definition of the action types (and their ordering) that involve that kind of knowledge content. The objective of this deliverable is to explain how task taxonomies and knowledge content objects can be designed with the help of formal ontology.
Ciaramita, M.; Sloman, S.; Johnson, M.; Upfal. E.
Bottazzi E., Catenacci C., Gangemi A., Lehmann J.
Revised version of the paper presented at Collective Intentionality IV, Pontignano (Siena) 13-15 October 2004.
Submitted for publications on Cognitive Systems Research. Special Issue on Cognition and Collective Intentionality, Elsevier, 2006.
Abstract. This paper gives an upside-down view of the problem of collective intentionality by providing a treatment of the notion of intentional collective. Based on reviews of the relevant literature, we apply three formal-ontological tools of our choice (namely, DOLCE, D&S, and DDPO) to the definition of the notions of collection, agent, plan and collective, all underlying the concept of intentional collective. Although our results are preliminary, we believe that the proposed approach offers several advantages, among which its explicitness, modularity and formality. This makes it particularly suitable for a founded specification of typologies of collections and collectives, hence for contributing to both philosophic and scientific research on these topics.
Ciaramita, M.; Gangemi, A.; Ratsch, E.; Saric, J.; Rojas, I.
In proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2005), Edimburgh, Scotland.
Publisher: Springer-Verlag GmbH; Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Subseries: Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 3369.
XIII Trieste Sumposium on Perception and Cognition, Trieste (Italy), 2005.
Aurnague, M.; Hickmann, M.; Vieu, L.
In C. Thinus-Blanc & J. Bullier (Eds.), Agir dans l'espace, Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris (pp. 217-232).
In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Evaluation of Systems for the Semantic Analysis of Text (Senseval 3/ACL'04).
Tense, Connectives and Discourse Structure. In Handbook of French Semantics.
Borillo, A. ; Bras, M., Le Draoulec, A.; Vieu, L.; Molendijk, A.; De Swart, H.; Verkyul, H.; Vet, C.; Vetters, C.
Edited by H. De Swart and F. Corblin, 309-348, CSLI, 2004.
In R. Meersman, Z. Tari et al. (eds.) OTM Confederated International Conferences, ODBASE 2004, Ayia Napa, Cyprus, October 29, 2004, LNCS 3290, Proceedings Part 10, Springer Verlag, pp. 670-688.
Abstract. Although ontology has gained wide attention in the area of information systems, a criticism typical of the early days is still rehearsed here and there. Roughly, this criticism says: general ontologies are not suited for real applications. We believe this is the result of a misunderstanding of the role of genereal ontologies since, we claim, even foundational ontologies (the most general and formal ontologies) have a crucial role in building reausable, adaptable and transparent application systems. We support this view by showing how foundational ontologies can be used in the manufacturing control area. Our approach (partially presented here through an example) provides a domain-specific ontology which is explicitly designed for applications, theoretically organized by a foundational ontology, driven by the application field for all intents and purposes, suitable for communication across different applications.
Gangemi, A., Catenacci, C., Battaglia, M.
Abstract. Formal ontology has proved to be an extremely useful tool for negotiating intended meaning, for building explicit, formal data sheets, and for the discovery of novel views on existing data structures. This paper describes an example of application of formal ontological methods to the creation of biomedical ontologies. Addressed here is the ambiguous notion of inflammation, which spans across multiple linguistic meanings, multiple layers of reality, and multiple details of granularity. We use UML class diagrams, description logics, and the DOLCE foundational ontology, augmented with the Description and Situation theory, in order to provide the representational and ontological primitives that are necessary for the development of detailed, flexible, and functional biomedical ontologies. An ontology design pattern is proposed as a modelling template for inflammations.
Pisanelli, D.M., Gangemi, A., Battaglia, M., Catenacci, C.
Abstract. Polysemy is the linguistic phenomenon by which a term has more than one meaning. It is not a negligible issue in information management, since an effective and unambiguous sharing of the semantic content of data among different databases or knowledge repositories is needed. The paper illustrates a case of polysemy (concerning inflammation), and puts it within the framework provided by the DOLCE+ foundational ontology. This solution enables us to formally represent several senses of inflammation, and their interrelationships. This we take as a demonstration of how ontologies play an essential role in providing precisely the conceptual foundations that are needed in order to make the intended meaning of natural language expressions available to all the (artificial or human) agents that could be involved in the semantic web.
Lehmann, J., Borgo, S., Masolo, C., Gangemi, A.
Abstract. We present a general conceptualization of causal relations that pivots on the distinction between causality, a law-like relation between types of events, and causation, the actual causal relation that holds between individual events. This distinction finds its formal characterization and embedding within DOLCE, in terms of a number of dependences between (types of) quality changes. Finally an application of the presented theory to the classical example of "the broken window" is provided.
Abstract. The main goal of this paper is a preliminary characterization of the categories of the mental, able to fit and integrate the foundational ontology DOLCE (a Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering); we will call this core ontology COM (Computational Ontology of Mind). The idea of COM emerges from the need of a conceptual clarification from the standpoint of formal ontology of the entities that play a role in agent technologies for information systems. Based on philosophical tradition, we have singled out a central relation in the realm of the mental: aboutness. In our proposal aboutness connects a mental state with a mental object, at a certain time, and with respect to a given intentional agent. Thus, in the paper we will give a first analysis of these entities, mainly focused on mental objects and their characteristics. We are also specifying the basic features of mental states and intentional agents, exploiting ontological categories and relations implemented in DOLCE.
Masolo, C., Vieu, L., Bottazzi, E., Catenacci, C., Ferrario, R., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N.
Abstract. This paper offers two main contributions. On the one hand, it establishes a general formal framework for developing a foundational ontology of socially constructed entities, in the broadest sense of this notion; on the other hand, it further contributes to understanding the ontological nature of roles. The key choice here is to put all social entities in the domain of discourse: besides social individuals, we also consider "reified" social concepts and roles, as well as their descriptions, i.e, the "social conventions" or "contexts" that define them. This allows us to formally characterize in a first-order theory the relationships among all these entities.
Guizzardi, G., Wagner, G., Guarino, N., van Sinderen, M.
Abstract. UML class diagrams can be used as a language for expressing a conceptual model of a domain. In a series of papers we have been using the General Ontological Language (GOL) and its underlying upper level ontology, to evaluate the ontological correctness of a conceptual UML class model and to develop guidelines for how the constructs of the UML should be used in conceptual modeling. In this paper, we focus on the UML metaconcepts of classes and objects from an ontological point of view. We use a philosophically and psychologically well-founded theory of classifiers to propose a UML profile for Ontology Representation and Conceptual Modeling. Moreover, we propose a design pattern based on this profile to target a recurrent problem in role modeling discussed in the literature. Finally, we demonstrate the relevance of the tools proposed by applying them to solve recurrent problems in the practice of conceptual modeling.
Abstract. OntoClean is a methodology for validating the ontological adequacyof taxonomic relationships. It is based on highly general ontological notions drawnfrom philosophy, like essence, identity, and unity, which are used to characterize relevant aspects of the intended meaning of the properties, classes, and relationsthat make up an ontology. These aspects are represented by formal metaproperties,which impose several constraints on the taxonomic structure of an ontology. The analysis of these constraints helps in evaluating and validating the choices made.In this chapter we present an informal overview of the philosophical notions in-volved and their role in OntoClean, review some common ontological pitfalls, and walk through the example that has appeared in pieces in previous papers and hasbeen the basis of numerous tutorials and talks.
Prevot L. and Vieu L.
in Proceedings of the Workshop SDRT, TALN2004, pp485-494, FÂ¬Â�s, Morocco, April 2004.
Prevot L., Maudet N. and Muller P.
in Proceedings of the Workshop SDRT, TALN2004, pp 495-504, FÂ¬Â�s, Morocco, April 2004.
Oberle, D., Mika, P., Gangemi, A., Sabou, M.
in S. Staab, P. Patel-Schneider (eds.), Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference (WWW2004), Semantic Web Track, 2004.
If ontology is the solution, what is the problem?
Kumar, A., Smith, B., Pisanelli, D.M., Gangemi, A., Stefanelli, M.
Simonov, M., Gangemi, A., Soroldoni, M.
Mika, P., Sabou, M., Gangemi, A., Oberle, D.
in C. Castelfranchi (ed.), International Conference on Collective Intentionality, 2004.
Abstract. Abstract: This paper gives an upside-down view of the problem of collective intentionality by providing a treatment of the notion of intentional collective. Based on reviews of the relevant literature, we apply two formal-ontological tools of our choice (namely, DOLCE and D&S) to the definition of the notions of collection, agent, plan and collective, all underlying the concept of intentional collective. Although our results are preliminary, we believe that the proposed approach offers several advantages, among which its explicitness, modularity and formality. This makes it particularly suitable for a founded specification of typologies of collections and collectives.
Workshop on Core Ontologies in Ontology Engineering, Northamptonshire (UK), 2004.
1st Italian Semantic Web Workshop SWAP 2004 (Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives), 10 dicembre 2004, Ancona (Italia).
2K* symposium, Madonna di Campiglio (Italia), 2004.
Proceedings of II Conference of the Italian Association of Cognitive Sciences (AISC), Ivrea (Italia), 19-20 marzo 2004 (pp. 48-50).
Networks volume 2, 2003, pp. 1-8.
Bras, M.; Le Draoulec, A.; Vieu, L.
Cahiers Chronos volume 11, pp. 71-97.
Bonifacio, M.; Bouquet, P.; Ferrario, R.; Ponte, D.
LECTURE NOTES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE volume 2577, pp. 29-38.
In P. Petta, R. Tolksdorf, F. Zambonelli (Eds.): Engineering Societies in the Agents World III. Proceedings of ESAW02 - Third International Workshop. 16-17 Settembre 2002, UniversitÂ¬Ã Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spagna (Springer).
Masolo, C.; Gangemi, A.; Guarino, N.; Oltramari, A.; Vieu, L.
Masolo, C., Borgo, S., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Oltramari, A.
Oltramari, A., Borgo, S., Catenacci, C., Ferrario, R., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Pisanelli, D.M.
Abstract. L'ontologia Ë†Ãº "lo studio dell'essere in quanto essere", scriveva Aristotele Ë†Ãº nasce ed è usualmente concepita come una disciplina strettamente filosofica, lontana dal mondo della tecnologia. Negli ultimi anni, tuttavia, l'esplosione delle comunicazioni in rete ha favorito un nuovo fenomeno: gli aspetti ontologici dell'informazionehanno acquistato un crescente valore strategico. Mediante una caratterizzazione ontologica dellË†Ã§informazione, infatti, questa può essere reperita, isolata, organizzata e integrata in base a ciò che più conta: il suo contenuto. Questo breve articolo si propone di presentare in modo informale un aspetto fondamentale delle ricerche in questo campo, legato al problema della disambiguazione del significato.
Navigli, R., Velardi, P., Gangemi, A.
Abstract. The OntoLearn system for automated ontology learning extracts relevant domain terms from a corpus of text, relates them to appropriate concepts in a general-purpose ontology, and detects taxonomic and other semantic relations among the concepts. The authors used it to automatically translate multiword terms from English to Italian.
Pisanelli, D.M., Gangemi, A., Steve, G.
Abstract. Lyee is not only a tool for generating code in a language, but also a methodology with a solid philosophical background and cognitive basis. We can even envisage the existence of a LyeeË†Ã§s "hypothetical world", as stated by its inventor, Fumio Negoro. In this paper we present an ontology of descriptions and situations designed with a cognitive approach and we investigate its relationships with the world of Lyee, its methodology and hypothetical assumptions.
Pisanelli, D.M., Zaccagnini, D., Capurso, L., Koch, M.
Abstract. The "evidence-based medicine" (EBM) paradigm is centered on the concept of "best evidence" and clinical studies based on this approach are more likely to be considered by physicians in their practice. In this paper we describe an ontology representing the concepts involved in evidence-based medicine and meta-analysis and show how an ontological approach can be applied both for revisiting EBM conceptual foundations and for allowing a more effective knowledge-based information retrieval in literature.
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Oltramari, A.
Abstract. Despite its original intended use, which was very different, WORDNET is used more and more today as an ontology, where the hyponym relation between word senses is interpreted as a subsumption relation between concepts. In this article, we discuss the general problems related to the semantic interpretation of WORDNET taxonomy in light of rigorous ontological principles inspired by the philosophical tradition and introduce the DOLCE upper-level ontology, which is inspired by such principles but with a clear orientation toward language and cognition. We report the results of an experimental effort to align WORDNET's upper level with DOLCE. We suggest that such alignment could lead to an "ontologically sweetened" WORDNET, meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
Gangemi, A., Navigli, R., Velardi, P.
Abstract. In this paper we present a progress report of the OntoWordNet project, a research program aimed at achieving a formal specification of WordNet. Within this program, we developed a hybrid bottom-up top-down methodology to automatically extract association relations from WordNet, and to interpret those associations in terms of a set of conceptual relations, formally defined in the DOLCE foundational ontology. Preliminary results provide us with the conviction that a research program aiming to obtain a consistent, modularized, and axiomatized ontology from WordNet can be completed in acceptable time with the support of semi-automatic techniques.
Abstract. The Semantic Web is a powerful vision that is getting to grips with the challenge of providing more human-oriented web services. Hence, reasoning with and across distributed, partially implicit assumptions (contextual knowledge), is a milestone. Ontologies are a primary means to deploy the Semantic Web vision, but few work has been done on them to manage the context-dependency of Web knowledge. In this paper we introduce an ontology for representing a variety of reified contexts and states of affairs, called D&S, currently implemented as a plug-in to the DOLCE foundational ontology, and its application to two cases: an ontology for communication situations and roles, and an ontology for peer-to-peer communication. The reified contexts represented in D&S have a rich structure, and are a middleware between full-fledged formal contexts and theories, and the often poor vocabularies implemented in Web ontologies.
Gangemi, A., Prisco, A., Sagri, M.T., Steve, G., Tiscornia, D.
Abstract. The increasing development of legal ontologies seems to offers atisfactory solutions to legal knowledge formalization, which in past experiences lead to a limited exploitation of legal expert systems for practical and commercial use. The paper describes some ontology-based tools that enable legal knowledge formalization. Jurwordnet is an extension to the legal domain of the Italian version of EuroWordNet. It is a content description model for legal information and a lexical resource for accessing multilingual and heterogeneous information sources. Its concepts are organised according to a "Core Legal Ontology" (CLO), based on DOLCE+, an extension of the DOLCE foundational ontology. Jurwordnet and CLO are also used to represent the assessment of legal regulatory compliance across different legal systems or between norms and cases. An example is discussed concerning compliance between EC directives and national legislations.
Abstract. In this paper we present a progress report of the OntoWordNet project, a research program aimed at achieving a formal specification of WordNet. Within this program, we developed a hybrid bottom-up top-down methodology to automatically extract association relations from WordNet, and to interpret those associations in terms ofa set of conceptual relations, formally defined in the DOLCE foundational ontology. Preliminary results provide us with the conviction that a research program aiming to obtain a consistent, modularized, and axiomatized ontology from WordNet can be completed in acceptable time with the support of semi-automatic techniques.
Gangemi, A., Sagri, M.T., Tiscornia, D.
Abstract. The paper describes the Jur-Wordnet (Jur-IWN) project, whose objective is an ontology-based extension to the legal domain of the Italian version of EuroWordNet. It aims at providing both a content description model for legal information and a resource for accessing multilingual and heterogeneous information sources. Jur-IWN involves a double interpretation of the model, and of its features. Conceived as a lexical resource, terms are linked to each other throughout lexical relation, while, as a content description model, the concepts are organised according to stronger assumptions about the ontological nature of entities that populate the legal domain, and about their relationship. The crucial problem is to save the global consistency of the model: the lexical view needs a clear definition of the boundaries between common language and technical legal terminology, while the conceptualisation of the core entities needs to be linked in a coherent way to upper level categories. The upper-level ontology chosen for the project is DOLCE, with its extensions.
Abstract. We introduce a formal language for multi-agent systems based on new modal operators. The modal operators express concurrency at the syntactic level. Operators containing quantifiers describe the evolution of a system where each agent has knowledge of other agentsË†Ã§ attitude toward a goal but not of their actions. This result is obtained without introducing standard epistemic operators. The semantics presents a mixture of Tarskian and game-theoretical elements. We apply game-theory to interpret the quantified modalities and to determine which information is available to the agents as well as their reasoning capabilities.
In Proceedings of Workshop "Towards a Joint European Laboratory on Interacting Knowledge Systems".
In Proceedings of JournÂ¬Ã©es Scientifiques SÂ¬Ã©mantique et ModÂ¬Ã©lisation, pp. 29-31.
Masolo, C., Borgo, S., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Oltramari, A., Schneider, L.
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Oltramari, A., Schneider, L.
Abstract. In this paper we introduce the DOLCE upper level ontology, the first module of a Foundational Ontologies Library being developed within the WonderWeb project. DOLCE is presented here in an intuitive way; the reader should refer to the project deliverable for a detailed axiomatization. A comparison with WordNet's top-level taxonomy of nouns is also provided, which shows how DOLCE, used in addition to the OntoClean methodology, helps isolating and understanding some major WordNet’s semantic limitations. We suggest that such analysis could hopefully lead to an “ontologically sweetened” WordNet, meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
Pisanelli, D.M., Gangemi, A., Steve, G., Battaglia, M.
Abstract. We are witnessing the unification of biology, since both biochemists and genetists now recognize a single universe of genes and proteins, and such unification is made possible also by the ever-increasing availability of the sequences of entire genomes. However, such a growing demand has to rely on a solid conceptual foundation in order to give a precise semantics to the terabytes available in different genome databases and eventually traveling over the networks.
Oltramari, A., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C.
Abstract.In this paper we propose an analysis and a rearrangement of WordNet's top-level taxonomy of nouns. We briefly review Word- Net and identify its main semantic limitations, in the light of the ontology evaluation principles lying at the core of the Onto- Clean methodology. Then we briefly present a first version of the OntoClean Top (OCT) ontology, and show how WordNet can be aligned with it. The result is a “cleaned-up” WordNet, which is meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
Ontologies and Information Systems: the Marriage of the Century?
Abstract. Although is recognized that ontologies may help building better and more interoperable information systems, there is skepticism on the real impact they may have in the future. We believe that ontologies will succeed in the information system arena and no systems will ever be designed without an ontological approach. In this paper we demonstrate the effectiveness of the ontological approach by illustrating three case studies. We show how an ontological framework is able to support semantic interoperability in the domain of fishery, then we present the role of ontologies for managing clinical guidelines and finally we sketch up an ontological analysis aimed at the interoperability of genetics databases.
Abstract The intuitive simplicity of the so-called is-a (or subsumption) relationship has led to widespread ontological misuse. Where previous work has focused largely on the semantics of the relationship itself, we concentrate here on the ontological nature of its arguments, in order to tell whether a single is-a link is ontologically well-founded. For this purpose, we introduce some techniques based on the philosophical notions of identity, unity, and essence, which have been adapted to the needs of taxonomy design. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques by taking real examples of poorly structured taxonomies, and revealing cases of invalid generalization.
Il Ragionamento Controfattuale. Un modello e la sua applicazione al Ragionamento Pratico.
Tesi di dottorato, Rapporto Tecnico Nr. DIT-02-101, Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell'Informazione, UniversitÂ¬Ã degli Studi di Trento.
LECTURE NOTES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, volume 2116, pp. 170-183.
In V. Akman, P. Bouquet, R. Thomason, R.A. Young (a cura di): Modeling and Using Context, Proceedings of the Third International and Interdisciplinary Conference, CONTEXT 2001. Dundee, UK, Luglio 2001. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract. Taxonomies are an important part of conceptual modeling, they provide substantial structural information, and are typically the key element in integration efforts, however there has been little guidance as to what makes a proper taxonomy. We have taken several notions from the philosophical practice of Formal Ontology, and adapted them for use in Information Systems. These tools, identity, essence, unity, and dependence, provide a solid logical framework within which the properties that form a taxonomy can be analyzed. This analysis helps make intended meaning more explicit, improving human understanding and reducing the cost of integration.
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., and Oltramari, A.
Abstract. The main goal of this paper is to present a systematic methodology for selecting general ontological categories to be used for multiple practical purposes. After a brief overview of our basic assumptions concerning the way a useful top-level ontology should be linked to language and cognition, we present a set of primitive relations that we believe play a foundational role. On the basis of these relations, we define a few formal properties, which combined together help to understand and clarify the nature of many common ontological distinctions.
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Oltramari A.
Abstract. In this paper we propose an analysis and an upgrade of WordNet’s top-level synset taxonomy. We briefly review WordNet and identify its main semantic limitations. Some principles from a forthcoming OntoClean methodology are applied to the ontological analysis of WordNet. A revised top-level taxonomy is proposed, which is meant to be more conceptually rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
Gangemi, A., Pisanelli, D.M., Steve, G.
Abstract. In this paper we briefly describe the conceptual tools employed in a project aimed at representing and managing norm dynamics across different versions of banking regulations. We only give some hints of the ontological part of the project: formal ontology, conceptual integration, normative concept classification and comparison.
Abstract. A common problem of ontologies is that their taxonomic structure is often poor and confusing. This is typically exemplified by the unrestrained use of subsumption to accomplish a variety of tasks. In this paper we show how a formal ontology of unary properties can help using the subsumption relation in a disciplined way. This formal ontology is based on some metaproperties built around the fundamental philosophical notions of identity, unity, essence,and dependence. These meta-properties impose some constraints on the subsumption relation that clarify many misconceptions about taxonomies, facilitating their understanding, comparison and integration.
Abstract. Guidelines for clinical practice are being introduced in an extensive way in more and more different fields of medicine They have the potential to improve the quality and cost-efficiency of care in an increasingly complex health care delivery environment. Computerization may increase the effectiveness of both the information retrieval of guidelines and the management of guideline-based care. The scenario is evolving from stand-alone workstations to telematics applications that enable guidelines development and dissemination. However, such a knowledge sharing requires the definition of formal models for guidelines representation. The models should have a clear semantics in order to avoid ambiguities. The role of ontologies is that of making explicit the conceptualizations behind a model. In this paper we present our library of ontologies and point out its role for integrating existing guideline models and defining standard representations.
Abstract. Polysemy is a bottleneck for the demanding needs of semantic data management. We suggest the importance of a well-founded conceptual analysis for understanding some systematic structures underlying polysemy in the medical lexicon. We present some cases studies, which exploit the methods (ontological integration and general theories) and tools (description logics and ontology libraries) of the ONIONS methodology defined elsewhere by the authors. This paper addresses an aspect of the project we are involved in, which investigates the feasibility of building a large-scale ontology library of medicine that integrates the most important medical terminology banks.
Abstract. Paper-based terminology systems cannot satisfy anymore the new desiderata of healthcare information systems: the demand for re-use and sharing of patient data, their transmission and the need of semantic-based criteria for purposive statistical aggregation. The unambiguous communication of complex and detailed medical concepts is now a crucial feature of medical information systems. Ontologies can support a more effective data and knowledge sharing in medicine. In this paper we survey the ontological analysis performed on the top-levels of the most important medical terminology systems (an outcome of the ONIONS methodology) and we sketch out the ontological analysis performed on the UMLS Metathesaurus. We show the convenience of an ontological approach in dealing with the different conceptualizations behind medical terminologies and the polysemy of terms.
Abstract. The paper presents a review of the ONIONS project. ONIONS is committed to developing a large-scale ontology library for medical terminology. The developed methodology exploits a description logic-based design for the modules in the library and makes extended use of generic theories, thus creating a stratification of the modules. Terminological knowledge is acquired by conceptual analysis and ontology integration over a set of authoritative sources. After addressing general issues about conceptual analysis and integration, the methodology is briefly described. The central part of the article presents the investigation we have made on the 476,000 medical concepts singled out by the National Library of Medicine as the Metathesaurus in the UMLS project. This is followed by several case studies concerning lexical polysemy, the interface between ontologies and lexicon, and other special problems encountered in the specification of the ontologies. A section describing the current structure of the library and the generic theories reused is provided. Current results of our research include the integration of some top-level ontologies in the ON9.2 ontology library, and the formalization of the terminological knowledge in the UMLS Metathesaurus.
Masolo, C. and Vieu, L.
Abstract. In qualitative spatial reasoning, the last ten years have brought a lot of results on theories of spatial properties and relations taking regions of space as primitive entities. In particular, the axiomatization of mereotopologies has been extensively studied. However, properties of space such as divisibility, density and atomicity haven’t attracted much attention in this context. Nevertheless, atomicity is especially important if one seeks to build a bridge between spatial reasoning and spatial databases approaches in areas like vision or GIS. In this paper we will investigate the possibility of characterizing such properties in spaces modeled by mereologies and mereotopologies. In addition, properties of atoms like extension and self-connectedness will be considered.
Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Vetere, G.
Abstract.Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer science community, and its importance is being recognized in a multiplicity of research fields and application areas, including knowledge engineering, database design and integration, information retrieval and extraction. We shall use the generic term “information systems”, in its broadest sense, to collectively refer to these application perspectives. We argue in this paper that so-called ontologies present their own methodological and architectural peculiarities: on the methodological side, their main peculiarity is the adoption of a highly interdisciplinary approach, while on the architectural side the most interesting aspect is the centrality of the role they can play in an information system, leading to the perspective of ontology-driven information systems.
Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to explore some semantic problems related to the use of linguistic ontologies in information systems, and to suggest some organizing principles aimed to solve such problems. The taxonomic structure of current ontologies is unfortunately quite complicated and hard to understand, especially for what concerns the upper levels. I will focus here on the problem of ISA overloading, which I believe is the main responsible of these difficulties. To this purpose, I will carefully analyze the ontological nature of the categories used in current upper-level structures, considering the necessity of splitting them according to more subtle distinctions or the opportunity of excluding them because of their limited organizational role.
Abstract. ONIONS is a methodology for ontology analysis and integration. It has been applied to some relevant and very large medical terminologies (e.g. the 332,000 medical concepts singled out by the National Library of Medicine in the UMLS project). Current results include the alignment of the top-level ontologies of the terminologies considered. The paper reviews the formal and conceptual tools employed in this task, presents the most significant results obtained, and discusses two case studies.
Abstract. Paper-based terminology systems cannot satisfy anymore the new desiderata of healthcare information systems: the demand for re-use and sharing of patient data, their transmission and the need of semantic-based criteria for purposive statistical aggregation. The unambiguous communication of complex and detailed medical concepts is now a crucial feature of medical information systems. Ontologies can support a more effective data and knowledge sharing in medicine. In this paper we briefly survey our ontological analysis and integration of various top-levels of terminologies and we report the main results of the ontological analysis of the UMLS Metathesaurus.
Abstract. Sharing and reusing large subsets of the medical terminology is needed in various areas: knowledge-based systems, information retrieval, standardization, etc. The main obstacle to sharing and reusing medical terminologies is the lack of conceptual integration of terms. Actually the intended meaning of terms is different according to the context in which they appear and to the context of use. Interdisciplinary research in ontology provides good evidence that use of generic ontologies specified from literature is the grounding matter for conceptual integration of terminologies. Following our experiences in engineering a methodology for terminology integration, we suggest that the contextual dependency of terms should be overcome by means of a collaborative modelling environment, a distributed approach, an expressive language and a sound methodology. ON9, our current medical ontology library, evolved using expressive languages like GRAIL, Ontolingua, Loom and OCML. It also took advantage from tools for the distributed negotiation of ontologies like Ontosaurus.
Borgo, S., Guarino, N., and Masolo, C.
Abstract. We discuss an approach to a theory of physical objects and present a logical theory based on a fundamental distinction between objects and their substrates, i.e. chunks of matter and regions of space. The purpose is to establish the basis of a general ontology of space, matter and physical objects for the domain of mechanical artifacts. An extensional mereological framework is assumed for substrates, whereas physical objects are allowed to change their spatial and material substrate while keeping their identity. Besides the parthood relation, simple self-connected region and congruence (or sphere) are adopted as primitives for the description of space. Only threedimensional regions are assumed in the domain.
Rossi Mori, A., Gangemi, A., Steve, G., Consorti, F., Galeazzi, E.
Abstract. We collected a set of words, suffixes, and idioms regarding actions in surgical procedures, ie. "deeds" as defined in a CEN European Prestandard; we then searched for their definitions in different authoritative sources and we performed an ontological analysis of this material according to the ONIONS methodology. The result was a formal model on surgical actions, as an extension of our previous model ON8.5, using Ontolingua with "frame ontology". We worked out criteria to assist domain experts in organizing hierarchies on surgical actions, according to points of view on structural, instrumental and functional properties.
Abstract. We present the most applicable aspects of our research in the conceptual integration of terminologies. From past experience, we claim that the conceptualizations provided for terminological ontologies need to be philosophically and linguistically grounded. We developed ONIONS, a methodology for integrating domain terminologies by exploiting a library of generic ontologies. Our current focus is on flexible and cooperative modelling of terminological ontologies. We adopt modular and negotiable architectures of ontologies and some WWW-oriented tools, such as Ontolingua and Ontosaurus.
Abstract. We present a logical theory of space where only tridimensional regions are assumed in the domain. Three distinct primitives are used to describe their mereological, topological and morphological properties: mereology is described by a parthood relation satisfying the axioms of Closed Extensional Mereology; topology is described by means of a "simple region" predicate, by which a relation of "strong connection" between regions having at least a surface in common is defined; morphology is described by means of a "congruence" primitive, whose axioms exploit Tarski's analogy between points and spheres.
Artale, A., Franconi, E., Guarino, N., and Pazzi, L.
Abstract. Knowledge bases, data bases and object-oriented systems (referred to in the paper as Object-Centered systems) all rely on attributes as the main construct used to associate properties to objects; among these, a fundamental role is played by the so-called part-whole relation. The representation of such a structural informa- tion usually requires a particular semantics together with specialized inference and update mechanisms, but rarely do current modeling formalisms and methodologies give it a specific, "first-class" dignity. The main thesis of this paper is that the part-whole relation cannot simply be considered as an ordinary attribute: its specific ontological nature requires to be understood and integrated within data modeling formalisms and methodologies. On the basis of such an ontological perspective, we survey the conceptual modeling issues involving part-whole relations, and the various modeling frameworks provided by knowledge representation and object-oriented formalisms.
Artale, A., Franconi, E., and Guarino, N.
Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to defend the systematic introduction of formal ontological principles in the current practice of knowledge engineering, to explore the various relationships between ontology and knowledge representation, and to present the recent trends in this promising research area. According to the "modelling view" of knowledge acquisition proposed by Clancey, the modeling activity must establish a correspondence between a knowledge base and two separate subsystems: the agent's behavior (i.e. the problem-solving expertize) and its own environment (the problem domain). Current knowledge modelling methodologies tend to focus on the former subsystem only, viewing domain knowledge as strongly dependent on the particular task at hand: in fact, AI researchers seem to have been much more interested in the nature of reasoning rather than in the nature of the real world. Recently, however, the potential value of task-independent knowlege bases (or "ontologies") suitable to large scale integration has been underlined in many ways. In this paper, we compare the dichotomy between reasoning and representation to the philosophical distinction between epistemology and ontology. We introduce the notion of the ontological level, intermediate between the epistemological and the conceptual level discussed by Brachman, as a way to characterize a knowledge representation formalism taking into account the intended meaning of its primitives. We then discuss some formal ontological distinctions which may play an important role for such purpose.
Guarino, N. and Giaretta, P.
Abstract. The word "ontology" has recently gained a good popularity within the knowledge engineering community. However, its meaning tends to remain a bit vague, as the term is used in very different ways. Limiting our attention to the various proposals made in the current debate in AI, we isolate a number of interpretations, which in our opinion deserve a suitable clarification. We elucidate the implications of such various interpretations, arguing for the need of clear terminological choices regarding the technical use of terms like "ontology", "conceptualization" and "ontological commitment". After some comments on the use "Ontology" (with the capital "o") as a term which denotes a philosophical discipline, we analyse the possible confusion between an ontology intended as a particular conceptual framework at the knowledge level and an ontology intended as a concrete artifact at the symbol level, to be used for a given purpose. A crucial point in this clarification effort is the careful analysis of Gruber' s definition of an ontology as a specification of a conceptualization.
Guarino, N., Carrara, M. and Giaretta, P.
Abstract. We focus in this paper on some meta-level ontological distinctions among unary predicates, like those between concepts and assertional properties. Three are the main contributions of this work, mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation. The first is a formal notion of ontological commitment, based on a modal logic endowed with mereological and topological primitives. The second is a formal account of Strawson's distinction between sortal and non-sortal predicates. Assertional properties like red belong to the latter category, while the former category is further refined by distinguishing substantial predicates (corresponding to types like person) from non-substantial predicates (corresponding to roles like student). The third technical contribution is definition of countability which exploits the topological notion of connection to capture the intended semantics of unary predicates.
Abstract. Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical language means offering a way to specify the intended meaning of its vocabulary by constraining the set of its models, giving explicit information about the intended nature of the modelling primitives and their a priori relationships. We present here a formal definition of ontological commitment which aims to capture the very basic ontological assumptions about the intended domain, related to issues such as identity and internal structure. To tackle such issues, a modal framework endowed with mereo-topological primitives has been adopted. The paper is mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation.
In Data and Knowledge Engineering, 8 (1992), pp. 249-261.
Gangemi, A.; Catenacci, C; Ciaramita, M.; Lehmann, J.
Abstract. This paper argues that a community of interoperating information systems agents requires an ontology not only of the objects in the world, the agents themselves and the message types available; but also of the complex behavioural protocols through which tasks are accomplished. The universe of these applications is described using formal upper ontologies and the material ontology of institutional fact, and a method of representing a subsumption lattice of behavioural protocols using the process algebra representation of finite state machines is adapted from the literature. This behavioural subtype structure is shown to be compatible with the other aspects of the ontology. The resulting system is applied to a community of agents.
Abstract. This report is a tutorial on how formal upper ontologies can be useful in building systems which involve interoperating autonomous information systems. It begins with an analysis of the problems that need to be solved in order to build such systems, then looks at a material ontology of institutional facts and speech acts which accounts for most of the content of such systems. It then shows how the OntoClean meta-ontological system can help us make sense of the structures involved in the ontologies needed to support interoperating autonomous systems, then finally how the formal upper ontologies of DOLCE and the Bunge-Wand-Weber system can help clarify the content of the material ontologies needed.
Abstract. This paper argues that the physical being of one of John Searle’s institutional facts is the totality of records of the fact, together with some very specific background activities and capacities.
Abstract. The focus of this paper is on quality of ontologies as they relate to interoperating information systems. Quality is not a property of something but a judgment, so must be relative to some purpose, and generally involves recognition of design tradeoffs. Ontologies used for information systems interoperability have much in common with classification systems in information science, knowledge based systems, and programming languages, and inherit quality characteristics from each of these older areas. Factors peculiar to the new field lead to some additional characteristics relevant to quality, some of which are more profitably considered quality aspects not of the ontology as such, but of the environment through which the ontology is made available to its users. Suggestions are presented as to how to use these factors in producing quality ontologies.
Abstract. Agents, which are more or less autonomous programs performing tasks on behalf of users, act by exchange of messages. The content of messages is regulated by agreements called ontologies among the interoperating parties. In order for interoperation involving complex objects to be successful, there are several meta-ontological requirements, notably the ability to identify the object in the appropriate context and the ability to tell which are its parts. These issues of identity and unity are central to the OntoClean meta-ontology and method. This paper shows how they apply to a typical e-commerce application under multiple levels of refinement of more abstract objects into their parts. In particular, it shows that identity and unity are sometimes represented lexically rather than logically, and how a state view of the interoperation follows naturally from its structural specification.
Abstract. Information systems ontology is intended to facilitate interoperability among the many applications which are now becoming available on the Internet. In particular, it is intended to facilitate the development of intelligent agents which can automate a large part of the task of a user achieving some end employing multiple autonomous applications. A large number of ontologies exist supporting specific kinds of interoperation among selected, generally mutually aware, applications. The intent of the upper ontology movement is to develop an abstract description of what there is in the world, in an application-independent form, which can be used both to help build specific ontologies and to help in finding common ground among them. This paper argues that for the purposes of information systems interoperation and the semantic web there is a distinction in upper ontologies between formal and material ontologies, based on analogies with concepts in Kant’s synthetic a priori, and that formal ontologies whose focus is on how we see the world are more likely to be successfully developed in the absence of applications than are material ontologies, which attempt to catalog the world a priori.
Colomb, R.M. and Dampney, C.N.G.
Abstract. This paper shows how it is possible to represent the complex data structures needed to support electronic commerce applications in the semantic web using ontologies. The conventional mereological or subtype-oriented refinement of the ontology is supplemented by a method of coordinated refinement based on category theory. The combined methods make ontologies a much more powerful tool for organising the semantic web.
Abstract. Formal ontology, as the science of the formal relations that structure reality as a whole, aims at a theory of categories corresponding to the most general features of possible objects, whether existing or non-existing. The present paper is an attempt to summarise and extend recent research in analytical metaphysics in a formalised theory of objects. Existence is characterised as a formal property, suggesting that the use of quantifiers alone does not involve any existential assumptions about the objects quantified over. However, the only non-existing objects allowed for in the present account are real or objective possibilities. De re modalities as well as ontological dependence are defined on the basis of a counterpart-theoretic specification of possibilia. The present framework allows for necessary and non-relative identity as well as for a granular parthood relationship satisfying the thesis of composition as partial identity. The paper culminates in the formalisation of an Aristotelian four-category ontology allowing for universals and particulars, substances and particularised properties; in this context, the redundance of higher-order material universals as well as moderate haecceitism is argued for. After a short analysis of relationality and extrinsicness, a theory of spatial and temporal objects is sketched and a temporal counterpart theory is proposed as a solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics. The paper concludes with some general remarks on the relation between ontology and the theory of subjectivity, defending a modal approach to consciousness and a counterpart theoretic analysis of intentionality.
Abstract. More and more enterprises are currently undertaking projects to integrate their applications. They are finding that one of the more difficult tasks facing them is determining how the data from one application matches semantically with the data from the other applications. Currently there are few methodologies for undertaking this task – most commercial projects just rely on experience and intuition. Taking semantically heterogeneous databases as the prototypical situation, this paper describes how ontology (in the traditional metaphysical sense) can contribute to delivering a more efficient and effective process of matching by providing a framework for the analysis, and so the basis for a methodology. It delivers not only a better process for matching, but the process also gives a better result. This paper describes a couple of examples of this: how the analysis encourages a kind of generalisation that reduces complexity and how ontological relativity can be used to enhance this. Finally, it suggests that the benefits are not just restricted to individual integration projects: that the process processes models which can be used as to construct a universal reference ontology – for general use in a variety of types of projects.
Abstract. This paper is a case study that describes how the Business Object Reference Ontology (BORO) approach works in practice. It describes in detail a selected part of the work using the approach that has been going on in the EPISTLE community for several years. This will help people better understand not just the benefits of using the approach, but also what it is and how it is applied. It will also illustrate the kinds of results it gives - by providing specific examples of the kind of very general patterns this type of analysis typically produces.
Borgo, S. and Masolo, C.
Abstract. We compare several geometrical theories based on mereology (mereogeometries) in a unified framework. Most theories in this area lack in formalization and this prevents any systematic logical analysis. We overcome this problem by isolating a common domain in R^n and, selecting natural interpretations, we use this framework to show several interdependencies among primitive relations of these theories. We conclude that, for dimension n ≤ 3 and with some additional assumptions, most of the theories considered are equivalent in the provided interpretation.
Steve, G., Gangemi, A., Pisanelli, D.M.
Abstract. ONIONS helps terminological ontology construction starting from existing, contextually heterogeneous terminologies. It is a methodology for integrating the context-dependent conceptualizations underlying conceptually heterogeneous terminology systems. We describe an application of this methodology to the medical domain with an example extracted from the umls system. We also give a short description of the current ontology library produced by means of Onions, and of its metaontology.

References: V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V. 
 V.