An Improved Methodology for Collaborative Construction of Reusable, Localized, and Shareable Ontology

Abdul Sattar,Mohammad Nazir Ahmad,Ahmad Kamil Mahmood,Ely Salwana Mat Surin

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3054412

Abstract

Interlocking Institutional Worlds (IWs) is a concept explaining the need to interoperate between institutions (or players), to solve problems of common interest in a given domain. Managing knowledge in the IWs domain is complex; however, promoting knowledge sharing based on standards and common terms agreeable to all players is essential and is something that must be established. In this context, ontologies, as a conceptual tool and a key component of knowledge-based systems, have been used by organizations for effective knowledge management, better decision-making, and interoperability among diverse institutions of an IWs domain. The development of ontology involves structural and logical complexity, and requires a well-designed, mature, and widely accepted methodology, to ensure its reliability. Many methodologies for ontology development have been proposed by several researchers; however, most of the developed methodologies have not included several important phases. Furthermore, several methodologies have not provided the complete details of the techniques and activities involved in the ontology construction process. Fewer details make it difficult to follow a methodology for designing ontologies. This study aims to compare existing methodologies based on sixteen important criteria and proposes an improved methodology for ontology development for IWs domains. The proposed methodology has included several important phases such as the Estimation of Human Resources, Re-engineering and Re-using of Resources, Collaborative Ontology Construction, the Conceptualization of both Endurants and Perdurants, Localization of an Ontology, Ontology Integration and Merging, Support for Interoperability, Versioning of an Ontology, and Ontology Population. The proposed methodology has been applied to design an OntoWM domain ontology for the Waste Management (WM) domain. The evaluation of the proposed methodology has been made by utilizing the designed OntoWM domain ontology in an ontology-based web application called SmartBinAnalytics. SmartBinAnalytics has been built using OntoWM, Java Server Pages (JSP), Jena Application Programming Interface (API), and MySQL. The proposed methodology can be used for the construction of domain ontologies in any IWs domain.

Highlights

Semantic web, as a machine-readable web, needs ontologies as its primary and most important component
The proposed methodology will assist in the estimation of human resources, re-engineering and re-using of resources, collaborative ontology construction, ontology construction of both endurants and perdurants, localization of an ontology, ontology integration and merging, support for interoperability, versioning of an ontology, and ontology population
It showed that the utilization of DSR methodology simplifies the implementation of the ontology development activities

Summary

Introduction

As a machine-readable web, needs ontologies as its primary and most important component. An ontology describes conceptions and their associations in. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Jenny Mahoney. The domain of discourse [1]. Knowledge-based applications require ontologies, and they serve as formal models and machine-understandable descriptions of a domain. Ontologies assist in sharing a domain’s knowledge to other relevant or irrelevant domains. Sharing of knowledge can improve individual employee performance as well as team performance [2].

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