From OntologPSMW
Each annual Ontology Summit initiative makes a statement appropriate to each Summits theme as part of our general advocacy designed to bring ontology science and engineering into the mainstream. The goal of this Ontology Summit 2009 is to articulate the power of synergizing the ontology and standards communities in the form of a communique in which a number of challenges are laid out. The joint communities of ontologists and standards developers represented at this year's summit hereby endorse the following list of concrete, near-term projects.
(2A)
- A harmonized ontology of units and dimensions (2B)
- Ontologizing product structure and properties (2C)
- Re-engineering Open Application Group specifications with UN/CEFACT CCTS (2D)
- Geospatial Catalog Mediation (2E)
- Enterprise Tools for traceability between financial business and technical models (2F)
- I-Ring (Realtime Interoperability Network Grid) for Oil and Gas standards (2H)
- Combining data sets and meta-data for public consumption (2I)
- Extending ISO 11179 to data models, IRIs and meta-models (2J)
These projects promise to demonstrate the advantages gained by incorporating ontology approaches when developing and
applying a standard. Benefits include:
(2K)
- Improved quality (2L)
- Easier implementation (2M)
- Improved conformance checking (2N)
- Improved integration and interoperability (2O)
- Increased precision and rigor (2P)
- Improved search and discovery (2Q)
- Reuse of standards (2R)
- Reduced ambiguity and misinterpretation (2S)
- Easier management of standards and applications (2T)
We also offer the following suggestions as priority research areas that should be addressed by the ontology and standards communities sooner rather than later:
(2U)
One issue of primary importance is the development of
business models for bringing ontologies into standards.
We propose that ontologies be made freely available to the user community via
ontology repositories and registries.
(2V1)
Other important issues, such as governance, have been addressed in
earlier Ontology Summits.
(2V2)
We have identified the following challenges for the ontology community:
(2W1)
a) Development of ontologies, particularly in the following areas
that arise from the need to integrate overlapping standards:
- Business entities
- Financial
- Organization
(2W2)
b) Identification of tools for evaluating, analyzing, selecting, and
comparing ontologies. An additional emphasis is to be placed on tools
for ontology presentation for subject matter experts in the domains
for the relevant standards.
(2W3)
c) Articulation of the business case for demonstrating the benefit of
using ontologies with standards.
(2W4)
We encourage the development of registries of standards and ontologies to facilitate communication between the two communities. For this purpose, we can use the following template for description:
(2X1)
- Identification of the relevant standards bodies (2X2)
- Issues (2X3)
- Use cases (2X4)
- Demonstration of benefits/impacts (2X5)
- Basic concepts (2X6)
- Existing ontologies (2X7)
In particular, the following domains will be of interest for identifying and developing ontologies:
(2X8)
This summit addresses the intersection of two active communities, namely the technical standards world, and the community of ontology and semantic technologies. This intersection is long overdue because each has much to offer the other. Ontologies represent the best efforts of the technical community to unambiguously capture the definitions and interrelationships of concepts in a variety of domains. Standards - specifically information standards - are intended to provide unambiguous specifications of information, for the purpose of error-free access and exchange. If the standards community is indeed serious about specifying such information unambiguously to the best of its ability, then the use of ontologies as the vehicle for such specifications is the logical choice.
(2Z1A)
Conversely, the standards world can provide a large market for the industrial use of ontologies, since ontologies are explicitly focused on the precise representation of information. This will be a boost to worldwide recognition of the utility and power of ontological models.
(2Z1B)
The goal of this Ontology Summit 2009 is to articulate the power of synergizing these two communities in the form of a communique in which a number of concrete challenges can be laid out. These challenges could serve as a roadmap that will galvanize both communities and bring this promising technical area to the attention of others. The challenges chosen were debated and decided upon during electronic discussions and at this Ontology Summit Symposium.
(2Z1C)
Standards are agreements across particular communities of interest, to achieve mutual benefit, based on the best available knowledge and technology. The community of interest may be global, sectoral, regional, national or even company or project specific, noting that the broader the community, the greater the benefits that can be achieved from exploiting common solutions, but also the challenges in achieving consensus.
(2Z2A)
Ontologies have the potential to facilitate both the creation and exploitation of standards. There are tens of thousands of existing traditional standards which effectively define the characteristics of products and their permitted values, tolerances and relationships. Even without ontologies, there is a challenge to represent such standards in a form where the established agreements can be exploited in an electronic environment, either singly or integrated into a consistent body of knowledge. For example, there are hundreds of standards related to fasteners - bolts, screws, rivets and other types, with their dimensions, materials and other characteristics. These are being brought together through application of dictionary standards like ISO 13584 and 22745. There are standards which define simple lists of permitted values for properties, such as country codes and currency codes. Information models have been created for physical products, buildings, factories and geographical entities. These standards provide an existing body of knowledge that provides a rich source of material which could potentially be exploited using ontological tools to capture all or selected parts of the content and the related implicit knowledge.
(2Z2B)
There appear to be opportunities for using ontology tools to validate and integrate existing and new information models, to support the identification of common concepts between standards, and to simplify the presentation of suites of standards to end users.
(2Z2C)
A further challenge would be exploit ontological tools and principles to improve the performance and quality of the development of new standards. Key capabilities would seem to be the ability to support rules and constraints in unambiguous computer-interpretable form, and to provide unambiguous definitions and identification for ontological components to facilitate reuse - possibly across multiple industry sectors. Clear guidelines and training would be needed to support such developments.
(2Z2D)
Major challenges will undoubtedly include the need to support ontological representations through multiple generations of information technology over periods exceeding the life of the products to which the ontologies apply. Careful configuration management will need to be applied to ensure that previous versions of an ontology remain available for reference. We also require a way to publish authoritative and agreed ontologies - this may need a step change in the policies and business models of standards bodies to exploit the new capability.
(2Z2E)
Widespread deployment of ontological techniques in support of standards will require the availability of efficient and reliable toolsets that will scale into industrial applications.
(2Z2F)
It must always be remembered that the development and implementation of standards is voluntary, unless mandated by legal or commercial constraints, so the benefit case is fundamental to the success of the standard. In considering the application of ontology to existing standards, there must be a clear additional benefit from the extra work required.
(2Z2G)
Ontologies allow the explicit specification of the multiple possible meanings of
concepts so that people can recognize commonalities and differences in the
semantics of the concepts that they use.
(2Z3A)
Ontologies can be used to improve the quality of standards,
leading to more robust implementations of the standards
and the semantic integration of multiple standards.
The axiomatization of formal ontologies can also support
automatic conformance-checking.
(2Z3B)
There are several roles that ontologies can play to
support the development, analysis, and extension of information standards
in industrial domains.
(2Z3C)
1. Design ontologies that formalize concepts within existing standards
In this approach,
standards serve as the requirements documents for ontologies, so that we can
evaluate the correctness of an ontology with respect to the standard.
(2Z3D)
2. Ontological analysis of existing standards (i.e. identify potential problems
and semantic ambiguities) and the subsequent use of ontologies to reengineer
existing standards. Examples of such analysis includes the OntoClean
methodology.
(2Z3E)
3. Using existing ontologies to support the integration of existing
standards. This may lead to the identification of new ontologies that
serve as mediators between the ontologies associated with each standard.
(2Z3F)
4. Identification of ontologies that we should be designing to lay the
foundations for emerging standards that are are currently under development.
(2Z3G)
Measurement units and dimensions (or dimensionality) are essential for the
meaningful communication of measurements, design specifications, scientific
data, medical data, environmental data and regulations, and many commercial
transactions. Confusion over measurement units can lead to disasters such
as the demise of the Mars Climate Observer satellite. An ontology of
measurement units and dimensions would have wide utility in many IT standards.
(2Z4A1)
Measurement units include meters, feet, inches, etc. all of which have the
dimension of "length", i.e., length is the "property" of which "meter" is
the quantum. In the metric (S.I.) system the base dimensions (units) are: mass (kg)
length (meter), time (second), current (Ampere), amount of substance (mole),
uminous intensity (candela), and temperature (Kelvin). Derived (or composite) dimensions
are constructed by multiplying or dividing the dimensions when multiplying or
dividing the corresponding quantities. Hence speed has dimension of lenght / time.
In practice the various base dimensions may have exponents of -3 to +3. Thus
the space of derived dimensions has size of 7 to the 7th power - approx. 800K
possible dimensions. For each dimension there are often serveral alternative
measurement units - thus the space of all possible measurement units is huge.
(2Z4A2)
Thus is it is clear that one will need to specify a framework for constructing
derived dimensions / units from base dimensions and units. It will also be
important to construct canonical URIs to reference the various measurement
units and dimensions. Furthermore, the ontology should be linked to standard
representations (names, abbreviations) for the various measurement units /
dimensions, e.g., meters, m, joules, etc. The UnitsML effort at NIST is one
such effort.
(2Z4A3)
There are some anomalies which need to be addressed, mostly notably having
to do with the measurement of concentrations. In the S.I. system concentrations
are to be recorded as moles / cubic meter, or more commonly, as moles / Liter,
i.e., molarity. However, we often see concentration measurements expressed
as ratios, e.g., percent solutions or parts per million. However, such concentration
ratios may either be mass ratios, mole ratios, volume ratios (for solutions),
or partial pressure ratios (for gases). Although all of these concentration
ratios appear to be dimensionless, they are not comparable, and conversions
among them (or to/from molarity) are both material dependent and state dependent,
e.g., temperature and pressure.
(2Z4A4)
Another anomaly concerns the dimensionality of work (energy) and torque,
both of which have units of Newton * meters. In the case of work, we are
computing the dot product of the force vector and the direction of travel.
In the case of torque are computing the cross product of force and distance.
(2Z4A5)
We envision an ontology which would specify (at least) the various base
dimensions and units of the SI (metric) system, the various metric scale
factors (nano-, micro-, milli-, kilo-, ...), the rules for constructing
various derived units, and the designations of the most common derived
units such as joules, watts, ... Initially, we envision only recording
a small number of non-metric base units, e.g., inch, foot, pound, and some
of the more popular derived units, e.g, quart, cup.
(2Z4A6)
Ideally, we should work with international standards organizations such as
ISO and BIPM which deal with measurement units and their representation.
However, as a practical matter it seems plausible to commence work jointly
with U.S. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
who have already begun a UnitsML project. Some organization(s)
such as NIST, ISO, BIPM, ... will eventually have to maintain a server
for the units/dimensions ontology. NIST has great expertise in measurement and
measurement units. Another advantage of working with NIST
is that it would circumvent the problems of licensing fees for ISO standards.
(2Z4A7)
Finally, we note the existence of prior efforts at units ontologies, notably
the early work of Tom Gruber, et al., "An Ontology for Engineering Mathematics",
in 1994. This should facilitate the development of a comprehensive units
ontology.
(2Z4A8)
- To enable enterprise integration based on inter-related data exchange, ontology and service specifications (2Z4B1)
- To enable the selective harvesting of ISO 10303 (aka STEP) standards into ontologies and other widespread modelling languages via OMG Model Driven Architecture �� approach (2Z4B2)
- ISO TC184 SC4 STEP community has been creating data exchange information models for 20 years �� lots of knowledge, lessons learned and capability there (2Z4B2A)
- With possibility of ISO STEP harvesting improvements made in OMG and W3C back into its standards (2Z4B2B)
- May lead ISO STEP to adopt OMG & W3C technology. (2Z4B2C)
- The Open Applications Group builds and publishes a business process interoperability standard for enterprise business processes. This standard is a horizontal standard but also focuses on Automotive, Aerospace and Defense, High Tech, Chemical, Steel and general discrete manufacturing industries. It has recently also expanded it��s support for process manufacturing as well. (2Z4C1)
- This diverse community requires a standard that is rigorous as possible and therefore the Open Applications Group is embarking on a project to re-work the OAGIS standard using the UN/CEFACT CCTS 3.0 methodology. (2Z4C2)
- The proposed OGC project would leverage a standards ontologies registry-repository to create and manage mappings between discovery-level models for geospatial information and earth observation resources. Some of these ontologies have been created informally, some have not yet been created for relevant standards. The two use cases would involve first the creation / discovery / management / annotation of ontology artifacts (schema and domain level), and then their data-level use in federated catalogs / knowledgebases for cross-community queries and broad "findability". There is both a general knowledge aspect, and aspects specific to geospatiotemporal observational parameters (feature of interest, phenomenon, measurand, sensor process model, etc.) Details here. (2Z4D1)
- Standardization of industry terms at the semantics level (2Z4E1)
- Work is under way with the EDM Council to create a financial industry semantics model covering securities terms and definitions. This is based initially on the content of the existing standards, with ongoing reviews of the content by business experts across the industry. (2Z4E1A)
- To support this, the ontology editor has defined a framework in which to derive local semantics by specialization of existing terms e.g. for geographical, math, legal and other common terms. A key requirement for this work is a better reuse of cross-industry ontology standards, or establishing the ontologies of data standards in these areas. (2Z4E1B)
- Enterprise Tools for traceability between financial business and technical models (2Z4E2)
- There is an important need to develop tools to enable "synchronization" between work on such things as data models and software classes and the Ontology. In practical terms, how do we take refinement of the ontology and reflect that in data/class structures, and vice-versa? (2Z4E2A)
- There is work ongoing in this area by the SIIA/FISD as well as important ground work from the European Central Bank. (2Z4E2B)
- The project plan is to build an ontology for spatial representation and correlated temporal representation to facilitate common understanding for interoperability to support specific defined services to support the integration of emergency and energy standards.Slides here (2Z4F1)
- The Oil and Gas iRING is providing a data integration and exchange environment for large capital projects. It supports the integration of applications within and between organizations such as equipment suppliers, Engineering, Procurement, and Construction companies, and the owners and operators of facilities. The iRING implements ISO 15926 in a Reference Data Library as the common language for exchange and integration. Applications have a Facade that maps the application to ISO 15926, thus enabling exchange and integration across applications and organizations. One piece of current work is the development of tools to assist in the mapping of the application ontologies to ISO 15926. Details here. (2Z4G1)
- ISO/IEC 11179-3 Edition 3 is expected to provide a standard metamodel for (among other things) defining the semantics of Data Elements in terms of formally defined concepts, as defined by formal ontologies. The connection between Data Elements and the actual data is however beyond the scope of 11179. Realization of the "Data Web" will require closing of this gap, to connect datasets with ontologies which define their semantics. A complete solution will need to address an array of dataset forms including XBRL, SDMX, domain-specific XML schemas and "microformats", and relational and non-relational DBMSs. Some of this may be supported by OMG CWM and/or forthcoming IMM standards, but a broader framework is called for. Details here. (2Z4H1)
- Presentation of data sets and associated metadata for public use will require use of ontologies not only for defining the semantics of individual data elements, but also for organizing assembled data sets for search and navigation (i.e., information architecture). The listed use cases illustrate the common need for a framework supporting this type of facility. (2Z4I1)
- Use cases: (2Z4I2)
This page is maintained by Steve Ray, Michael Grüninger, Howard Mason, Matthew West and Peter P. Yim
(2Z4I3)
