Introduction to Knowledge Engineering

Ontology , Knowledge Base

GMU IT344 Fall 2013 Prof. Vera Goodacre

What is Ontology ?

Philosophical sense

What is existence? What are the meanings of being ? Into what categories can we divide existing things ?
Computational models that enable certain kind of automated reasoning

Computer science

IT344 Vera Goodacre

Database versus Knowledge base

Database

defines data and via conceptual schema relations on data Data is expressible in ground atomic facts
Defines terms with which to represent knowledge

Ontology (Knowledge base)

Ontology defines its vocabulary and builds on it

Knowledge can be expressed with logical sentences and variables

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Ontology / Knowledge Base

From Helsinki University of Technology TAI research center

Property types for the relation type Employment(employed-by)

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Ontology / Knowledge Base

Knowledge is presented as instances of concepts

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From HUT TAI research center

Ontology / Knowledge Base

Ontology is Specification of a representational vocabulary for a specific domain Study of category of things that may exist in some domain Key challenge How to share knowledge between domains Attempts to formalize approach to building ontologies : KIF Knowledge Interface Format Lisp like notation
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Example : Vehicle ontology

From Basic Ontology Processes

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Ontology processes

How to process knowledge in the ontology Elaboration Uses inheritance (upward search to get information) Elicitation Downward search to get information for a specific node Information Retrieval Locate a node and information from its neighborhood
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Ontology processes

From Basic Ontology Processes

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Advanced Ontology processes

Dynamic Integration Propagates the new information via several nodes Classification , generalization Ontology based inferences The ultimate goal of field of automated reasoning is to model and emulate human thinking processes. The basis for any inference process is a formal system, ontology provides such example - used in Knowledge Acquisition systems

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References

Translation approach to portable ontology specification

Thomas R. Gruber, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, CS dept, Stanford university

Basic Ontology Processes Adil Kabaj , Khalid Ei Hachimi Helsinki University of Technology

TAI research center, Paula Silvonen

Ontology-Based Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge Systems

Henk-Jan Lebbinck, John-Jules Ch.Meyer,Cilia L.M. Witteman, Utrecht University

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