Ontological Engineering

Title: Ontology Engineering

Mondays, 4-7pm, Fall 2013,

Room: TBD, UB North Campus

Instructors: Barry Smith and Ron Rudnicki

Office hours: By appointment via email at [1] and [2]

Ontologies are an increasingly important tool in all areas of information and systems engineering, where they are used to address issues which arise where data is collected and described by different groups in different ways. Ontologies provide taxonomy-based computerized lexica that can be used to describe diverse bodies of data. They thereby provide a strategy for those who need to aggregate and compare data. They are designed to make data more easily discoverable, and to allow large bodies of data to be more effectively searched and analyzed.

In addition, ontologies play an important role in the so-called Semantic Web, where the Web Ontology Language (OWL) forms a central building block in the stack of web technology standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

This course will provide an introduction to ontology technology, focusing on applications in the areas of military intelligence, healthcare, and finance. It will provide an overview of how ontologies are created and used, together with practical experience in the development of OWL ontologies and in the use of associated web technology standards. It will also address some of the human factors underlying the success and failure of ontology projects, including issues of ontology governance and dissemination.

The course will be built out of 3-hour sessions, each of which will involve 2 hours of lecturing and discussion and 1 hour of practical experience with ontology editing software and other semantic web technologies. Students may elect to take the course for 2 credit hours without the practical segment.

The course will feature occasional guest lectures by leading ontologists from Buffalo and elsewhere, including participants in on-going ontology projects.

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Outcomes

By the end of the class, students will be able to understand the nature, utility and scope of contemporary ontological engineering. They will understand methods and rules for ontology development; gain experience of what is involved in contributing to ontological initiatives, and learn to understand the benefits and risks of such initiatives.

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Grading and Related Policies and Services

All students will be required to take an active part in class discussions throughout the semester. In addition they will be required to design and complete an ontology project, including written description, and brief presentation of the project in class. Students enrolled in the practical segment will be required to create a Protégé file to accompany their ontology project, and also to complete regular quizzes designed to gauge developing competence in the use of the Protégé Ontology Editor and SPARQL query language.

For 3 credit hour students, 75% of your grade will be determined in four equal portions deriving from:

1. class participation,

2. written description of ontology project (3000 words),

3. Protégé ontology file,

4. class presentation.

The remaining 25% of your grade is determined by the results of in-class quizzes.

For 2 credit hour students, your grade is determined in three equal portions deriving from:

1. class participation,

2. written description of ontology project (4000 words; deadline November 25),

3. class presentation.

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For incomplete grading policy see here

For academic integrity policy see here

For accessibility services see here

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Schedule

August 26: Basic Introduction to Ontology

• We will begin by addressing questions such as: What is an ontology? What are the differences and interrelations between ontology (philosophy), ontology (science), and ontology (engineering)? How are ontologies used? We will also provide an introduction to Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), focusing on a discussion of the question: What is a plan?

• Lab 1: Introduction to Protégé, installation, configuration, and navigation

September 2: Labor Day (no class)

September 9: An Overview of Ontology Projects in Military Domains

• Lab 2: Protégé, building the taxonomy, introduction to defining classes with OWL

September 16: An Overview of Ontology Projects in Healthcare Domains

• Lab 3: Protégé, defining class relationships

September 23: Referent Tracking: Use of Ontologies in Tracking Systems (with Werner Ceusters)

• Lab 4: Protégé, additional definitional techniques in OWL

September 30: Ontology and the Semantic Web (with Alan Ruttenberg)

• Lab 5: Protégé, annotation properties, and versioning

October 7: The CUBRC US Army Ontology Collaboration (with LCOL William Mandrick)

• Quiz: Protégé and OWL

October 14: An Overview of Ontology Projects in Financial Domains (with Charles Hoffman via Webex?)

• Lab 6: Protégé, review and advanced topics

October 21: An Overview of Ontology Projects in Manufacturing and Retail Domains

• Lab 7: Introduction to SPARQL, using select queries to explore DBpedia

October 28: An Overview of Ontology Projects in Task Scheduling Domains and in Alert Systems (with Moises Sudit)

• Lab 8: SPARQL, extending select queries with filters, grouping, and booleans

November 4: Ontology and Natural Language Processing

• Lab 9: SPARQL, using construct queries to add instance data

November 11: Ontology and Information Fusion Research (with James Llinas)

• Lab 10: SPARQL, updating instance data

November 18: Ontology, Search and Retrieval

• Lab 11: Other Semantic Web tools: Ontofox, D2RQ, and RDFa

November 25: Presentations of Student Projects

• Quiz: SPARQL

December 2: Presentations of Student Projects

Background Reading and Video Materials

• Tutorial on Protégé
• Video: Introduction to Biomedical Ontology