How to write and use the ontology requirements specification document

Abstract

The goal of the ontology requirements specification activity is to state why the ontology is being built, what its intended uses are, who the endusers are, and which requirements the ontology should fulfill. The novelty of this paper lies in the systematization of the ontology requirements specification activity since the paper proposes detailed methodological guidelines for specifying ontology requirements efficiently. These guidelines will help ontology engineers to capture ontology requirements and produce the ontology requirements specification document (ORSD). The ORSD will play a key role during the ontology development process because it facilitates, among other activities, (1) the search and reuse of existing knowledge-aware resources with the aim of re-engineering them into ontologies, (2) the search and reuse of existing ontological resources (ontologies, ontology modules, ontology statements as well as ontology design patterns), and (3) the verification of the ontology along the ontology development. In parallel to the guidelines, we present the ORSD that resulted from the ontology requirements specification activity within the SEEMP project, and how this document facilitated not only the reuse of existing knowledge-aware resources but also the verification of the SEEMP ontologies. Moreover, we present some use cases in which the methodological guidelines proposed here were applied. © Springer-Verlag 2009.