This listing provides a brief overview of several upper level ontology initiatives discussed at the DELOS Ontology Harmonisation meeting, Rome (xx April 2001).
For each initiative, a short description, web link or citation...
The Cyc project, includes a highly detailed 'upper ontology' specified in CycL. A version of the Cyc upper ontology has been available in text format for some time; Cyc have recently pre-announced the availability (for June 2001) of a 'free/open' version of a larger portion of the ontology, accompanied by software tools. The new data exports will be represented using the RDFS-based DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML).
WordNet, a freely available ("unencumbered") lexical database, includes an implicit ontology within the noun / hypernym hierarchy. Work on a multilingual version of WordNet began as EuroWordNet (@@ref) and is proceeding under the Simple project. Several RDF/XML representations of WordNet exist (eg. xmlns.com exposes the class hierarchy as an RDF Schema).
An IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) study into the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Retrieval (FRBR) led by Tom Delsey provides a common reference point for many metadata modelling efforts in this area. FRBR distinguishes between Works, Expressions, Manifestations and Items, as a basis for understanding the demands placed on traditional library information systems by electronic / multimedia / networked resources. See also [Delsey 2000] @@notes from 1st ABC meeting.
The INDECS project provides a high level model designed to facilitate interoperability amongst e-commerce applications. INDECS is based around a model of events and processes, and draws upon ideas from the IFLA FRBR study. See also the INDECS critique of DC and subsequent D-Lib article from Bearman et al. INDECS was a fast-track EU funded project. Current status (???).
SPIRT, from the Australian record keeping (archival) community, provides an event-oriented model for tracking metadata records over time. It includes facilities for characterising information provenence, and is based on the DC-in-RDF working draft of 1999. (@@ref)
IKF Project, EUREKA. An industry lead project; Intelligent Knowledge Fusion. Nicola and Aldo involved, will produce a high level ontology.
The IEEE standard upper ontology group (IEE SUO) is an initiative that seeks to create a common upper ontology based on existing work in the area. The IEEE SUO work is conducted on a formal basis (eg. using KIF and logic to provide a basis for discussions). The IEEE discussions happen on a public, archived (and high traffic) mailing list; see the IEE SUO website for related links and further information.
Onions, a medical reference ontology aimed at integrating different (bio-)medical ontologies including UMLS and Snomed version 3.0. Based at CNR ITBM. Publically available (in LOOM, Ontolingua) as a library of inter-dependent modules.
Pat Hayes (@ref) has produced a (@@ref) "Catalogue of temporal theories". See also context theory / situation refs.