Merge Domain ontologies below Upper ontology

1. Merge Domain ontologies below Upper ontology Advisor: P-J, LEE Student: Y-C, LIN Date: April 28 2006

2. agenda • Ontology • Upper Ontology • Standard Upper Ontology (SUO) • Suggested Upper Merge Ontology (SUMO) • Mid-Level Ontology (MILO) • Teknowledge Ontologies • Challenges to SUMO

3. Ontology  What Is an Ontology • An ontology is similar to a dictionary or glossary, but with greater detail and structure that enables computers to process its content. An ontology consists of a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that describe a domain of interest. • Ontologies created for computer applications are written in a formal language that is machine-readable

4. Upper Ontology • An upper ontology is limited to concepts that are meta, generic, abstract and philosophical, and therefore are general enough to address (at a high level) a broad range of domain areas. Concepts specific to given domains will not be included; however, this standard will provide a structure and a set of general concepts upon which domain ontologies (e.g. medical, financial, engineering, etc.) could be constructed. • REF. http://suo.ieee.org/

5. Upper Ontology (con.) • Upper Ontology provides a constant and universal infrastructure for knowledge representation and inference. • Upper ontologies identify and define general concepts. Their purpose is to serve as: • (a) a foundation for more specialized ontologies; • (b) a framework for integrating domain-oriented ontologies; and/or • (c) a guide for translating between multiple ontologies that cover the same domain(s) but use a different vocabulary.

6. Standard Upper Ontology • The SUO WG is developing a Standard that will specify an upper ontology to support computer applications such as data interoperability, information search and retrieval, automated inferencing, and natural language processing. • Authority • The SUO WG operates under the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) and is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Standards Activities Board.

7. Suggested Upper Merge Ontology • The SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology) provides a foundation formiddle-level http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/sigmakee/KBs/Midand domain ontologies, and its purpose is to promote data interoperability, information retrieval, automated inference, and natural language processing.

8. Suggested Upper Merge Ontology (con.) • The SUMO consists of approximately 4,000 assertions (including over 800 rules) and 1,000 concepts. The SUMO is designed to be relatively small so that these assertions and concepts will be easy to understand and apply. • Adam Pease is the current IEEE SUO Working Group Technical Editor for SUMO, and maintains a SUMO page. • REF. http://suo.ieee.org/SUO/SUMO/index.html

9. Features of SUMO • Mappings to all of WordNet(for more detail, http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ and there are a free software for English retrieval) • Language generation templates for Hindi, Chinese, Italian, German, Czech and English • Tool support for browsing and editing • Largest free, formal ontology available, with 20,000 terms and 60,000 axioms when all domain ontologies are combined.

10. Features of SUMO (con.) • Richly axiomatized, not just a taxonomy. All terms are formally defined. Meanings are not dependent on a particular inference implementation. An inference and ontology management system however is provided. An additional system that supports visual editing, and does a better job of displaying the ontologies, especially in non-Western languages is the KSMSA system. • REF. http://www.ontologyportal.org/ • (for more detail of SUO http://ontology.teknowledge.com/arch.html)

11. The pictures of SUMO • http://ontology.teknowledge.com/sumo-1.36classes.pdf in English • http://ontology.teknowledge.com/sumo-1.36classes-Chinese.pdf in Chinese

12. The pictures of SUMO

13. REF. http://www.ontologyportal.org/

14. Mid-Level Ontology (MILO) • A mid-level ontology that is intended to act as a bridge between the high-level abstractions of the SUMO and the low-level detail of the domain ontologies. • (In KIF format http://suo.ieee.org/SUO/SUMO/SUMO_173.kif • There are a document for guiding to read SUMO http://ontology.teknowledge.com/Ontology_User_Guide.doc)

15. The MILO ontology (con.) • The Mid-level Ontology (MILO) is Teknowledge's current effort for creating a bridge between the high-level abstractions of SUMO and the domain ontologies. MILO’s coverage is governed by a pragmatic standard. It contains all concepts mentioned at least three times in the Brown corpus.

16. The MILO ontology (con.) • This criterion guarantees that MILO covers the concepts people actually use, rather than some prescriptive set. MILO concepts are intermediate in that they are mapped directly to language used in the everyday world. For example, SUMO defines change of possession in an abstract sense, while MILO contains specializations for such familiar concepts as renting and charging a fee.

17. The MILO ontology (con.) • The Mid-level Ontology is divided into three modules: Objects, Processes, and Abstract (depending upon which SUMO concept the module inherits from). MILO will have on the order of 2,500 concepts. Estimated completion of MILO is in early 2004.

18. The pictures of MILO • Actually, there have some software (ex. kifb) are designed for view the ontologies in KIF format. However, they are limited in Linux platform. • The pictures of MILO in KIF. • How to Read the ontologies in KIF.

19. Upper (and Mid-level) Ontology as Integration Framework • The figure shows several specialized ontologies being consolidated by using upper and mid-level ontologies as an integration framework.

20. Back

21. Teknowledge Ontologies • Teknowledge creates upper, mid-level, and domain ontologies. Our aim is to create ontologies that are relatively easy for people to understand and practical for computational use.

22. Teknowledge Ontologies (con.) • The current efforts. • The SUMO ontology in KIF format (also available in these formats:  OWL, LOOM, and Protege) • The MILO ontology (a mid-level ontology that is intended to act as a bridge between the high-level abstractions of the SUMO and the low-level detail of the domain ontologies).

23. Teknowledge Ontologies (con.) • Domain ontologies • Computing Services ontology, covering computer components, systems, networks, and services. • Financial Ontology • Ontologies of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism • Ontologies of Government, Economy, Geography, and Transportation • Two very narrow ontologies of atomic elements and biological viruses

24. Challenges to SUMO • Inevitably people ask why we would engage in constructing an upper-level ontology, when such an ontology already exists. The Austin-based company Cycorp has devoted fifteen years to creating an ontology that has been used in a wide range of applications. The Cyc ontology is extremely impressive, but there are problems with its use as a standard. Cycorp has released only a small part of its ontology to the public, the company retains proprietary rights to the vast bulk of its ontology [10],

25. Challenges to SUMO (con.) • and the contents of the ontology have not been subject to extensive peer review. Aside from these limitations of Cyc, there are some distinct advantages of the SUMO. First, the SUMO is the working paper of an IEEE-sponsored open-source standards effort. This means that users of the ontology can be more confident that the ontology will eventually be embraced by a large class of users. Second, the SUMO was constructed with reference to very pragmatic principles. Any distinctions of strictly philosophical interest have been removed from the ontology. This has resulted in a KB that should be simpler to use than Cyc.

26. Cyc introduce • Cyc名稱源自於百科全書的縮寫，是由Lenat等學者於1990年，為了解決各小領域間差異所造成的限制，而發展出來的upper ontology。理論上其以微世界的理論作為基礎，將全世界視作許多不同的領域，並以些概念來將絕大部分的人類知識具體化。 • 在Cyc的組成上，是由真實世界的最上層概念 thing開始延伸，分成獨立物件、模糊物件與抽象物件，而後再一直往下來細分。自1990年來，知識工程師已經延伸出超過十萬個類別，約略一百萬個fact與axiom.

27. The picture of Cyc

28. Q&A • Thank for your attention