ROMULUS: The Repository of Ontologies for MULtiple USes Populated with Mediated Foundational Ontologies

摘要

A foundational ontology contributes to ontology-driven conceptual data modelling and is used to solve interoperability issues among domain ontologies. Multiple foundational ontologies have been developed in recent years, and most of them are available in several versions. This has re-introduced the interoperability problem, increased the need for a coordinated and structured comparison and elucidation of modelling decisions, and raised the requirement for software infrastructure to address this. We present here a basic step in that direction with the Repository of Ontologies for MULtiple USes, ROMULUS, which is the first online library of machine-processable, modularised, aligned, and logic-based merged foundational ontologies. In addition to the typical features of a model repository, it has a foundational ontology recommender covering features of six foundational ontologies, tailor-made modules for easier reuse, and a catalogue of mappable and non-mappable elements among the BFO, GFO and DOLCE foundational ontologies.