Mike et al -
A sample communique was provided in the invitation note to the UOS
panelists, and is appended. It was presented just to provide talking
points. What the panelist agree to say (perhaps not unanimously -
though one hopes it could be) may have no resemblance to this sample.
The communique will probably not be finalized until Tuesday the 14th.
Prior discussion would certainly be helpful. (01)
The 'maturity assessment' categories provided by Jim Schoening are a
good example of what might also be developed for ontologies, but the
criteria for ontologies would be quite different, I think. I'm not
sure that table is needed before the meeting. (02)
[MU] >> how much consensus can be expected?
It depends. If everyone obsesses on the few points that provoke
debate, maybe not much. If they choose to focus first on the hundreds
of concepts that are very similar in the upper ontologies, maybe quite
a bit. Shall we encourage them to find the points of maximum
agreement? (03)
Pat (04)
Patrick Cassidy
MITRE Corporation
260 Industrial Way
Eatontown, NJ 07724
Mail Stop: MNJE
Phone: 732-578-6340
Cell: 908-565-4053
Fax: 732-578-6012
Email: pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Uschold,
Michael F
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 10:04 PM
To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
Subject: [uos-convene] Communique - Goals of the UOS (06)
We need to have some description of the goals of the Joint Communique,
and perhaps a provisional outline of content. Is this meant to be a few
sentences? A few paragraphs? A few pages? in length? (07)
Here are some comments:
* It is very important to agree on a set of target capabilities
or
intended benefits for UOs. That could be an outcome of the meeting, and
go into the communique.
* I agree that a maturity assessment (e.g. TRL) should be made
for
each category of capability.
* Getting agreement from everyone to sign the comunique may be
challenging.
* Custodians of various UOs to come to consensus on what exactly?
There is considerable diversity and years worth of heated discussions,
how much consensus can be expected? Witness the recent 'here we go
again' thread between MattW and BarryS.
* What would an ideal outcome of consensus be? (08)
Mike
====================================================================== (09)
=============================
Sample Communique
============================= (010)
Joint Statement of the Panelists of the Upper Ontology Summit March
15th,
2006 (011)
Background (012)
The science and technology of representing knowledge in a form suitable
for
use and reasoning in computers has been developing for over thirty
years.
Practitioners in the field have achieved an increasingly detailed
understanding of the fundamental components of meaning and how to
represent
them in formats suitable for computer processing. With the success and
expansion of the internet, the potential for creation of a Semantic Web
has
become widely recognized, and the number of teams and individuals
creating
knowledge classifications of varying degrees of logical formality has
dramatically increased. As this technology develops further it will
enable
deployment of computer applications with increasing ability to make
reliable
knowledge-based decisions that currently require human effort.
Programs
with such enhanced capacity will increase the speed and efficiency of
automated information analysis and exploitation. (013)
Much recent emphasis has been focused on creating common syntactical
formalisms for representing knowledge, but syntactical formalisms alone
do not provide an effective standard of meaning. The complementary
technology for effectively representing the semantic content of complex
widely used concepts is also available, but agreement on a standardized
set
of conceptual elements has not yet been reached. The need for such
agreement is increasing rapidly as many isolated projects of varying
complexity have been initiated to capture knowledge in
computer-interpretable formalisms. Without a common resource for
specifying meaning in a uniform fashion, the great potential for
sharing
knowledge usable for computer reasoning will not be realized.
A new initiative is needed to find agreement on a set of basic concepts
that
can be easily understood and exploited by diverse communities of users
to
permit their systems to accurately exchange detailed meanings for the
concepts they need to communicate with each other. (014)
The basis for detailed representation of meaning is now available in
several
upper ontologies together with associated mid-level and domain
ontologies,
reflecting the results of decades of research and development in
knowledge
representation. Each of these ontologies has an existing community of
users. Finding a means to relate these ontologies to each other and to
make
them easily usable by other developers of domain ontologies can provide
users with access to the essential common standard of meaning that will
allow accurate interchange of conceptual information among multiple
communities, significantly enhancing the value of the knowledge in each
of
the communities whose knowledge bases are linked to the common
standard. (015)
Conclusion of the Upper Ontology Summit (016)
The theory and technology of knowledge representation have advanced to
a
stage where the concepts that are the meanings of terms can be formally
specified in computer systems with great detail and precision.
To demonstrate the power of the technology and provide benchmarks by
which
objective evaluations of alternative methods of representing knowledge
can
be tested, it will be helpful to create sophisticated
open-source applications available for public evaluation. Each of
the existing upper ontologies can provide a basis for a standard of
meaning
representation, but the details of the representations are sufficiently
different that knowledge in one ontology cannot at present be
accurately
translated into another. To ease the creation of applications that can
take
advantage of any of the existing upper ontologies, we now want to
develop
methods to relate the existing upper ontologies to each other. (017)
We have agreed to take substantive steps toward developing methods to
interrelate the existing upper ontologies to each other. The result
of a successful effort will provide a standard of meaning that will be
freely available and readily adapted as a basis for any domain
ontology. It
will enable a high level of interoperability, and a means to develop
basic
ontologies that can be incorporated into more functional ontologies
using
any of those upper ontologies linked to it. (018)
Conclusion of the Upper Ontology Summit in Brief (019)
(1) We agree that the technology of modeling and representing knowledge
has
developed to the point where it is feasible to create knowledge-based
reasoning systems with information analysis and exploitation
capabilities
significantly more advanced than traditional systems based on
relational
databases and object-oriented programming without semantic
interpretation. (020)
(2) Each of the existing upper ontologies differs in specifics of
implementation, but we all agree that use of some formally defined
common
upper ontology is essential for semantic interoperability. (021)
(3) Each of the existing upper ontologies has different strengths, and
we
believe that the technology will be advanced most rapidly by continuing
exploration of such different approaches, while finding the common
elements
that will help users develop applications that can take advantage of
any of
the well-structured formal upper ontologies. (022)
(4) We believe that finding methods to relate different upper
ontologies to
each other will have near-term practical benefits in enhancing
interoperability of knowledge-based systems, and will also permit more
effective investigation of reasoning methods on large knowledge bases. (023)
(5) As one means of interrelating the existing upper ontologies, we
plan to
explore the possibility of creating a common subset ontology that will
be
accurately translatable into each of the linked upper ontologies. In
addition to making the existing upper ontologies more easily
accessible,
this can provide a simple but powerful tool to allow users to explore
creation of interoperable systems with basic reasoning capability on a
pilot
scale.
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