Requirements for representing situations

Abstract

This paper describes experiences with the limitations imposed by OWL on the representation of common constructs in two distinct application domains: qualitative reasoning models in ecology, and ontology based legal reasoning. We will show that OWL is not expressive enough to unambiguously represent situations using restrictions. Secondly, we show that representing the idea that instances in different concrete situations are actually the same individual, is a non-trivial issue which cannot be adequately solved in OWL. Thirdly, a representation of a general situation cannot be easily reused within other situations.