A Domain Ontology Construction Method with Ontology Modification Effort Assessment

Abstract

In order to perfect the domain ontology construction process and construct more effective domain ontology to provide semantic support for multiple domain applications, a domain ontology construction method DOCM is proposed. In view of the shortcomings of existing methods, this method divides the ontology construction process into ontology requirements analysis, domain knowledge analysis, ontology establishment, ontology evaluation, and ontology modification effort assessment. And a three-dimensional modification assessment method is proposed to evaluate the modification effort when the ontology is used or modified. In this assessment method the changes of the number of concepts, properties and the semantic relationships in the ontology are all considered. Therefore, Based on the assessment method, the ontology owner can track the ontology development process and grasp the effort for ontology modification and use. And according to the evaluate results users can determine whether modifying the ontology directly or extracting the needed ontology elements from the ontology before it is used.