Robert Powell MS Thesis Defense in Computer Science
Date: Monday, November 23rd
Time: 12pm noon
Zoom Connection Info:
https://maine.zoom.us/j/89376362608?pwd=Q0h4NkNhQUhJTjA5VXNDVU5BVVNPdz09
Meeting ID: 893 7636 2608
Password: 059076
Title: Approximating first order logic ontologies in OWL
Abstract: With the amount of data collected everyday ever expanding,
techniques which allow computers to semantically understand data are
growing in importance. Ontologies are a tool to describe the
relationships connecting data so that computers can correctly interpret
and combine data from many sources. An ontology about water needs to
describe what the term “river” may refer to: An arbitrary river or one
usable for navigation; a single tributary or an entire river network;
the riverbed or the water itself? Well-designed ontologies can be
shared, reused, and extended across multiple applications and facilitate
better integration of different data collections. Common Logic (CL) and
the Web Ontology Language (OWL) are two logic based languages of popular
interest. However, ontologies developed in either of these languages
are not easily consumed by users of the other language. By utilizing the
first order properties of Common Logic, an automated approximation
routine between CL and OWL is provided. OWL, being less expressive than
CL, is capable of being totally represented by logically equivalent CL
axioms. Leveraging the logical equivalence, we provide a method of axiom
normalization and extraction in order to construct robust OWL ontologies
from existing CL sources. This increases CL ontology intelligibility,
and allows the automatic construction of OWL versions of existing
reference ontologies. Further, the benefits of such a translation are
demonstrated by applying previously exclusive OWL tooling and analysis
techniques to evaluate the translated ontologies.