Hi folks;
This growing list of support is exciting!
I'm going to exercise the prerogative, which Pat assigned me as COSMO
lead, to dispense with formalities and diving right into our business. To
that end, I’ve included a straw-person process for evolving toward a common
semantic model. This is meant strictly as a starting point for
discussion.
The straw-person is an attempt to incorporate lessons learned from the Standard
Upper Ontology (SUO) effort while offering:
·
short term usable results,
·
respect for and use of existing
formal ontological artifacts, and
·
incremental sound formal results.
This approach, I think, includes the key elements that Dr. Sowa asked
for in the SUO framework and provides a staging of effort and results that
assumes modest amount of effort on our parts. It also addresses Pat’s
desire to be inclusive of the European efforts.
The suggesting steps are as follows:
1. Choose
an existing ontology as the initial embodiment of an ontology integration hub to
which other ontologies will be mapped
a.
Agree on a set of metrics for
selection of the ontology integration hub
i.
Metrics must be easily collectable
b.
Agree on candidates for the selection
process
c.
Score candidate ontologies
according to metrics – the high scoring upper ontology will become the
initial ontology integration hub
2. Release
this ontology as-is as the initial COSMO ontology
3. Address
key short-falls of the hub ontology
a.
Maintain a prioritized list of
issues
b.
Agree on resolution as time and
interest dictate
4. Map
the structural axioms (ground atomic formulae) of the remaining candidate
ontologies to the ontology integration hub
a.
This process proceeds
opportunistically as our personal and project time allows
b.
Push out yearly major releases based
on achievement of yearly goals
c.
This step runs concurrently with
step three
5. Map
the remaining axioms of the remaining candidate ontologies to the ontology
integration hub
a.
As desired, such free-form axioms
can be added in steps three and four
Please excuse the roughness. My other tasks beckon.
I look forward suggestions.
Best!
Eric Peterson
Chief Ontologist
McDonald Bradley Inc.