Finding New Diamonds: Temporal Minimal-World Query Answering over Sparse ABoxes
Stefan Borgwardt, Walter Forkel, Alisa Kovtunova · 2019
Lightweight temporal ontology languages have become a very active field of research in recent years. Many real-world applications, like processing electronic health records (EHRs), inherently contain a temporal dimension, and require efficient reasoning algorithms. Moreover, since medical data is not recorded on a regular basis, reasoners must deal with sparse data with potentially large temporal gaps. In this paper, we introduce a temporal extension of the tractable language ELH⊥, which features a new class of convex diamond operators that can be used to bridge temporal gaps. We develop a completion algorithm for our logic, which shows that entailment remains tractable. Based on this, we develop a minimal-world semantics for answering metric temporal conjunctive queries with negation. We show that query answering is combined first-order rewritable, and hence in polynomial time in data complexity.