An experiment in ontology use for command and control interoperability

Abstract

The article addresses the question of whether methods from ontology engineering and reasoning can help domain-experts (as opposed to laymen) when mapping concepts from domain-specific vocabularies to each other. The overarching context is military Command & Control systems, and the prospects for fostering interoperability between them. The main contribution of the article is an experiment conducted with senior military officers on mapping two artillery vocabularies to each other. Overall, the evidence is stronger that (i) hierarchical structuring of concepts, (ii) definitions of concepts and (iii) mappings to a common reference vocabulary can help domain-experts to make sound matches than help them avoid unsound ones. However, more research is needed before a verdict can be given. Though the experiment exhibits high ecological validity, using subjects who are experts in the domain of the two vocabularies that are to be mapped to each other, internal validity suffers confounding effects of previous expertise, and reliability is low, due to the low number of subjects ( $$N=13$$ N = 13 ).