Ontological Engineering

Title: PHI 598 / IE 500: Ontological Engineering (Online class), Spring 2018.

Registration:

Class#: 23854 (PHI)

Class#: 23450 (ENG)

Off-campus students: Registration details are provided under Part Time/Graduate here.

Office hours: By appointment via email at phismith@buffalo.edu

The Course

Course Description: The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the methods and uses of ontological engineering, focusing on applications in areas such as military intelligence, healthcare, and document processing. It will provide an overview of how ontologies are created and used, together with practical experience in the development of 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 is built out of on-line video lectures, video presentations created by students, and discussion sessions covering the topics of each lecture.

Course Structure: This will be a three credit hour on-line graduate seminar. It will be taught through the medium of a series of 2-hour long videos incorporating presentation of powerpoint slides and question-answer sessions. The final session will be structured around youtube videos created by the students in the class.

Schedule: The link to the course video for any given week will be provided at 9am on the corresponding Sunday (as listed below). Students are required to watch the video within 48 hours of this posting and to send a ~200 word summary of the content of this video to Dr Smith before the end of this period. In addition they should post to the class email forum any questions and comments relating to the video from the relevant week. Examples of video lectures from previous courses are appended below.

Text: Robert Arp, Barry Smith and Andrew Spear, Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, August 2015.

Ontologies are an important tool in all areas where data is collected and described by different groups in different ways. Ontologies provide taxonomy-based computerized lexica used to describe diverse bodies of data. They thereby help to aggregate and compare data, to make data more easily discoverable, and to allow large bodies of data to be more effectively searched and analyzed. Ontologies also 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).

Ontology in Buffalo: UB ontologists are involved in a variety of national and international projects in the military, healthcare, bioscience, engineering, transport and financial domains. There is an acknowledged shortage of persons with ontological engineering expertise in all these fields, and in related fields such as journalism, manufacturing and government administration. UB ontologists also work closely with CUBRC, a Buffalo research, development, testing and systems integration company specializing in the areas of Data Science and Information Fusion; Chemical, Biological and Medical Sciences; and Aeronautics.

Schedule

January 28: Introduction to Ontology for Systems Engineering 1

February 4: Introduction to Ontology for Systems Engineering 2

February 11:

February 18:

February 25:

March 4:

March 11:

March 18:

March 25: Spring Recess

April 1:

April 8:

April 15:

April 22:

April 29:

May 6: Student presentations in video format

Provisional list of topics

1. Introduction to Ontology for Systems Engineering 1

2. Introduction to Ontology for Systems Engineering 2

3. Ontology, AI and Robotics

4. Services, Commodities, Infrastructure

5. Product Life Cycle Ontology

6. Ontology and Information Engineering in the Healthcare Domain

7. The Science of Document Informatics

8. Finance Ontology

9. The Ontology of Plans

10. Ontology of Military Logistics

11. Ontology and Intelligence Analysis

12. Ontology and Data Fusion

13. Ontology of Terrorism

14. Presentations of Student Projects

Student Learning Outcomes

Program Outcomes/Competencies	Instructional Method(s)	Assessment Method(s)
The student will acquire a thorough knowledge of current ontology research in areas relating to engineering, data fusion, defense and intelligence	Video lectures and online discussions	Review of submitted online content and of participation in online discussion forum
The student will acquire experience in ontology development	Video lectures and critique of successive drafts	Review of results in the form of xsl spreadsheet or Protégé file
The student will acquire experience in communicating the results of work on ontology development	Creation of youtube presentation and of associated documentation	Review of results

Grading

Grading will be based on two factors: I: understanding and criticism of the videos presented in classes 1-13

All students are required to ingest the content of all videos and to take an active part in on-line discussions throughout the semester.

II: preparation of a youtube video and associated documentation (including powerpoint slides and essay).

Important dates

Jan 28	- first video released by Dr Smith at 9am
Feb 20	- about now start to discuss by email the content of your video and essay with Dr Smith
Feb 28	- submit a proposed title and abstract
Mar 31	- submit a table of contents and 300 word summary plus draft of associated ppt slides
Apr 27	- submit penultimate draft of essay and powerpoint
May 5	- submit final version of essay and powerpoint and upload final version of video to youtube

Content and structure of the essay should be discussed with Dr Smith. Where the essay takes the form of the documentation of a specific ontology developed by the student it should include:

Statement of scope of the ontology

Summary of existing ontologies in the relevant domain

Explanation of how your ontology differs from (or incorporates) these ontologies

Screenshots of parts of the ontology with some examples of important terms and definitions

Summaries of potential applications of the ontology

Grading Policy Grading follows standard Graduate School policies. They will be weighted according to the following breakdown:

Weighting Assignment

26% video summaries (2% per summary)

14% forum participation

20% youtube video

20% powerpoint slides

20% essay / ontology content

Final Grades

Grade Quality Percentage

A	4.0	93.0% -100.00%
A-	3.67	90.0% - 92.9%
B+	3.33	87.0% - 89.9%
B	3.00	83.0% - 86.9%
B-	2.67	80.0% - 82.9%
C+	2.33	77.0% - 79.9%
C	2.00	73.0% - 76.9%
C-	1.67	70.0% - 72.9%
D+	1.33	67.0% - 69.9%
D	1.00	60.0% - 66.9%
F	0	59.9% or below

An interim grade of Incomplete (I) may be assigned if the student has not completed all requirements for the course. An interim grade of 'I' shall not be assigned to a student who did not attend the course. The default grade accompanying an interim grade of 'I' shall be 'U' and will be displayed on the UB record as 'IU.' The default Unsatisfactory (U) grade shall become the permanent course grade of record if the 'IU' is not changed through formal notice by the instructor upon the student's completion of the course.

Assignment of an interim 'IU' is at the discretion of the instructor. A grade of 'IU' can be assigned only if successful completion of unfulfilled course requirements can result in a final grade better than the default 'U' grade. The student should have a passing average in the requirements already completed. The instructor shall provide the student specification, in writing, of the requirements to be fulfilled.

The university’s Graduate Incomplete Policy can be found here.

Related Policies and Services

Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. Through the honest completion of academic work, students sustain the integrity of the university while facilitating the university's imperative for the transmission of knowledge and culture based upon the generation of new and innovative ideas. See http://grad.buffalo.edu/Academics/Policies-Procedures/Academic-Integrity.html.

Students may collaborate for the assignments in which case the submitted materials should be clearly labeled as such, with the names of all collaborating students. In case students who collaborate cannot come to a consensus for certain parts of the work, alternate solutions proposed by individual students should be clearly marked as such. Grading of individual students will take into account such alternatives.

Accessibility resources: If you have any disability which requires reasonable accommodations to enable you to participate in this course, please contact the Office of Accessibility Resources, 25 Capen Hall, 645-2608, and also the instructor of this course. The office will provide you with information and review appropriate arrangements for reasonable accommodations.