[OEP] Units and Measures

There was some discussion at the recent telecon about what the OEP group
might do related to units and measures. Possibilities include:
1.	Conversion activity: Take a single [the best one, ideally] units
and measures ontology and convert it.
2.	Conduct a survey of existing ontologies for units and measures, 
a.	Evaluation Activity: evaluate the various proposals
b.	Conversion activity: recommend the best one and convert it to
OWL.
3.	Adaptation/Creation activity: Adapt and improve the best
existing ontology and have it be a formal recommendation.

The only one of these activities that has a reasonable chance of success
with modest effort is 1. However, unless someone feels confident to pick
a good one, it will be some effort to survey existing ones first.  I
have a lot of experience with Gruber's ontology, and can say with high
confidence that it is very good, and would be a perfectly reasonable
place to start.  It could be a stake in the ground, and others could
critique/evolve/adapt it as they saw fit.

As Deb G. said in the telecon today, the other two tasks are opening
Pandora's box. It is a lot of work to do a good survey and even more
work to take those results and start on an official recommendation for a
units and measures ontology. I belive this kind of activity is OUT of
scope for the SWBPD WG.

It is also possible that converting the Gruber ontology into OWL might
itself be a challenging task, once you start to think how to do thing
the *best* way, as opposed to a straight-forward translation.

Mike

Received on Thursday, 19 August 2004 19:15:12 UTC