OWL-Time - ISSUE-65: General purpose temporal predicates

The primary goal of OWL-Time is to implement Allen's temporal relations in OWL, so all the OWL-Time predicates have Temporal classes as both domain and range. For example, 'hasBeginning' relates a temporal entity to a temporal instant. This means that attaching timing information to any event or activity using one of these predicates implies that it _is_ a "Temporal Entity". This would be inconsistent with the approach used in the OGC/ISO Feature Model for associating geometry with a feature, in which feature types are _not_ subclassed from geometries, but have associations with geometries. At least that would be the argument if time is treated the same as geometry.

As there appears to be interest in standard predicates to associate timing information to events or activities, we have a problem. One solution (ISSUE-64) would be to relax the global domain constraints on the existing predicates. Alternatively, we can create some general purpose object properties, such as the following:

:activityBeginning
  rdfs:comment "Beginning of an event or activity."@en ;
  rdfs:range :Instant ;
.
:activityDuration
  rdfs:comment "Duration of an event or activity, expressed as a scaled value"@en ;
  rdfs:range :Duration ;
.
:activityDurationDescription
  rdfs:comment "Duration of an event or activity, expressed using a structured description"@en ;
  rdfs:range :GeneralDurationDescription ;
.
:activityEnd
  rdfs:comment "End of an event or activity."@en ;
  rdfs:range :Instant ;
.
:activityTime
  rdfs:comment "Supports the assignment of a temporal entity (instant or interval) with an event or activity"@en ;
 rdfs:range :TemporalEntity ;
.

The slightly awkward names are because hasBeginning, hasDuration etc are already in use.
Not at all wedded to activity*. Could be event* or something else if anyone has any smart ideas.

I've added these to the branch here:
https://github.com/w3c/sdw/blob/simon-time-predicates/time/rdf/time.ttl

OTOH, some upper-level ontologies make a fundamental distinction between time-bounded entities (occurrent or perdurant) and non-time-bounded entities (continuant or endurant). If we accept this viewpoint, then we might just use the original OWL-Time predicates and accept the entailment.  I guess it depends which fundamental commitment we are willing to make.

Simon

Simon J D Cox
Research Scientist
Environmental Informatics
CSIRO Land and Water<http://www.csiro.au/Research/LWF>

E simon.cox@csiro.au<mailto:simon.cox@csiro.au> T +61 3 9545 2365 M +61 403 302 672
   Mail: Private Bag 10, Clayton South, Vic 3169
   Visit: Central Reception, Research Way, Clayton, Vic 3168
   Deliver: Gate 3, Normanby Road, Clayton, Vic 3168
people.csiro.au/Simon-Cox<http://people.csiro.au/Simon-Cox>
orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-3420<http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-3420>
researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Cox3<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Cox3>
github.com/dr-shorthair<https://github.com/dr-shorthair>

PLEASE NOTE
The information contained in this email may be confidential or privileged. Any unauthorised use or disclosure is prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately and notify the sender by return email. Thank you. To the extent permitted by law, CSIRO does not represent, warrant and/or guarantee that the integrity of this communication has been maintained or that the communication is free of errors, virus, interception or interference.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.