Ontolog Forum
Matthew West OBE
Our friend and Ontology Summit collaborator Matthew West OBE died on 1 August 2023.
It was very sad news to all of us who worked with him, and a great loss to the community.
Matthew was a director of Information Junction, where he delivered consultancy in information management, and was the Technical Lead for the UK Digital Twin programme. He gained a BSC and PhD in Chemical Engineering and joined Shell in 1978, initially as a Refinery Technologist, but from 1987 on the computing/business interface with a particular interest in Information Management and Data Modelling. He has been a key technical contributor to ISO 15926 "Lifecycle integration of process plant data including oil and gas production facilities" and IIDEAS (ISO 18876) - Integration of Industrial Data for Exchange, Access and Sharing. He also developed a data model of Shell's Global Downstream business.
Matthew was the Shell Visiting Professor in the Keyworth Institute at the University of Leeds. He was a Member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the British Computer Society, and he was a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered IT Professional.
Matthew has been an Ontology Summit general chair, track chair,
session chair, panelist, speaker and communique co-author on numerous
occasions since the beginning of the Ontology Summit in 2006. He was a
founding member of the Ontolog Forum Board of Trustees where he was
the Membership Chair.
He is the author of "Developing High Quality Data Models" and was awarded an OBE for services to information management in the 2021 New Years Honours List (UK).
His Ontology Summit presentations and publications include:
• "An Introduction to 4 Dimensionalism and ISO 15926" - ConferenceCall_2006_02_23
• "Integrating Data or Ontologies - A look at the ISO 18876 Architecture" - ConferenceCall_2006_06_01
• Ontolog "Database And Ontology" Mini-Series Kick-off Session - ConferenceCall_2006_10_12
• "From Ontology to Data Model: Choices and Design Decisions" - ConferenceCall_2006_11_16
• L. Obrst, P. Cassidy, S. Ray, B. Smith, D. Soergel, M. West, and P. Yim. The 2006 Upper Ontology Summit Joint Communiqué. Applied Ontology, 1(2):203–211, 2006.
• A. Hashemi, T. Schneider, M. Bennett, M. Brady, C. Casanave, H. Graves, N. Guarino, A. Levenchuk, E. Lucier, L. Obrst, S. Ray, A. Vizedom, M. West, and T. Whetzel. Ontology for Big Systems: The Ontology Summit 2012 Communiqué. Applied Ontology, 7(3):357–371, 2012.
• F. Neuhaus, A. Vizedom, K. Baclawski, M. Bennet, M. Dean, M. Denny, M. Grüninger, A. Hashemi, T. Longstreth, L. Obrst, S. Ray, R. Sriram, T. Schneider, M. Vegetti, M. West, and P. Yim. Ontology Summit 2013 Communiqué: Toward Ontology Evaluation across the Lifecycle. Applied Ontology, 8(3):179–194, June 2013.
• M. Grüninger, L. Obrst, K. Baclawski, M. Bennett, D. Brickley, G. Berg-Cross, P. Hitzler, K. Janowicz, C. Kapp, O. Kutz, C. Lange, A. Levenchuk, F. Quattri, A. Rector, T. Schneider, S. Spero, A. Thessen, M. Vegetti, A. Vizedom, A. Westerinen, M. West, and P. Yim. Ontology Summit 2014 Communiqué: The Semantic Web and Big Data meet Applied Ontology. Applied Ontology, 9(2):155–170, 2014.
• M. West. Information Management Framework: Quality Basics. J. Wash. Acad. Sci., 107(3):11–31, 2021.
We all miss Matthew very much.