Re: [OEP] Units and Measures

Where was this on the meeting agenda?

Anyway, I agree that a pragmatic approach to this would be to pick an 
existing ontology and convert it for SW use.  Furthermore, the Gruber 
ontology looks like a good starting point for this.  However, as an 
engineering math ontology it is deficient.  Precision is an important
part of such math, and it is blissfully ignored in the Gruber and Olsen
paper.  Without it there is not much one can say about Measurements for 
that matter (with the exception of counts).  Does anyone know of any work 
to add precision to the Gruber ontology?  If not, then perhaps we should 
call any SW rendering of it merely a Units Ontology.


Uschold, Michael F wrote:
>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.


-Evan

Received on Thursday, 19 August 2004 20:18:58 UTC