Some tools and methodologies for domain ontology building
Aldo Gangemi · Comparative and Functional Genomics · 2003
The Laboratory for Applied Ontology (OntoLab) is a distributed structure (Rome and Trento) of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology (a section of the Italian National Research Council).It performs basic and applied research on the ontological foundations of conceptual modelling, exploring the role of ontologies in different fields, such as knowledge representation, knowledge engineering, database design, information retrieval, natural language processing and the semantic web.OntoLab is coordinated by Nicola Guarino, and currently employs five full-time research scientists (besides the author and the coordinator): S. Borgo, C. Masolo, A. Oltramari, D.M. Pisanelli and G. Steve.The group is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that combines computer science, philosophy and linguistics and relies on logic as a unifying paradigm.Although its core interest is in methodologies and theories, the research of OntoLab addresses, or makes use of, artifacts developed in all the basic areas of ontology engineering:• Logical languages to represent ontologies.• Computational issues to reason with ontological knowledge.• Methodologies for building, analysing and merging ontologies.• Tools that support methodologies.• Ontological theories.• Linguistic processing for ontology lexicalization.• Languages and tools that interface ontological theories with other applications. Projects and programsCurrent projects at OntoLab include 5thFP Won-derWeb, in which we are developing a library of foundational (i.e.domain-independent) ontologies for the semantic web [10] and the thematic network OntoWeb, especially as far as the Content Standard Harmonization SIG is concerned [9].Another project is EUREKA Intelligent Knowledge Fusion (IKF), with enterprise consulting services on ontologies and assistance to software houses in developing innovative applications in banking [5], insurance, and service-level management domains.The UN-FAO joint project Fishery