CALL FOR PAPERS: AI EDAM SPECIAL ISSUE, WINTER 2009, VOL. 23, NO. 1 DEVELOPING; USING ENGINEERING ONTOLOGIES

摘要

The development of engineering ontologies aims to establish formal information definitions in the engineering domain in order to enable the application of a wide range of technologies for the support of design and engineering. Ontologies allow us to build semantically richer knowledge models to facilitate better communication of such models and to develop and apply knowledge-based technologies that require semantic resources. Engineering presents some special challenges in ontology development. It is characterized by diversity, complexity, and multiplicity. It involves many stages, each of which has its own unique tasks and activities. Its focus on the possible or potential leads to a strong emphasis on abstraction. The engineering enterprise is often geographically distributed, with tasks carried out in many different languages, and this may constrain access to domain experts for the purposes of ontology construction or verification. Thus, although there are no problems associated with the development of ontologies for engineering that cannot be found elsewhere, engineering is perhaps unique in the combination of challenges that are faced.