Ontology Summit 2016 : Framing the Conversation: Ontologies within Semantic Interoperability Ecosystems

Ontology Summit 2016 Communiqué

In today’s digital information environment, interoperability between systems is a ubiquitous need and expectation. Businesses, organizations and research groups seek to create optimal experiences, minimize operational overhead, reduce costs, and drive future innovations utilizing: the Internet of Things,  the Smart Grid,  Intelligent Agents and Machine Learning, Personalized Services and Content Delivery, and Data Mining Techniques.

Both syntactic and semantic interoperability across systems and applications are necessary. In practice, however, Semantic Interoperability (SI) is difficult to achieve.

Ontologies and related reasoning systems (both terms used in the broadest sense) are key to the facilitation of semantic integration and interoperability. But several key questions are involved. How do we define the tools, methodologies and frameworks which support this interoperability? What is required to achieve optimal performance across applications and domains? How do we frame the conversation when discussing the role of ontologies in support of interoperability with various stakeholders?

Ontology Summit 2016 explored how ontologies and ontological methods can facilitate semantic Interoperability (SI). In this document we present an overview of semantic interoperability challenges. We discuss the ontological tools and methodologies which enable SI and we summarize findings abstracted from recent work covering 4 broad domains: healthcare/pharma, earth sciences, engineering, and finance/retail. Finally, we present design approaches, strategies and next steps for the field moving forward.

The full text of the Communiqué can be found here:

Endorsement of the Communiqué

Ontolog Forum

Ontology Summit 2016 : Framing the Conversation: Ontologies within Semantic Interoperability Ecosystems

Ontology Summit 2016 Communiqué

Endorsement of the Communiqué