Formalizing user actions for ontologies

Abstract

We demonstrate an approach to the formalization of user actions1 for the purpose of producing task-oriented ontologies. Verbs and nouns are extracted from a document that depicts user actions during a surface water monitoring process. The conceptual structure of the user actions is formalized through a combination of Formal Concept Analysis and Entailment theory. The subconcept-superconcept relations between user actions in a concept lattice are refined through the entailments of troponymy, proper inclusion, and backward presupposition. The approach is intended to strengthen the consideration of user tasks in ontology engineering for geographic information applications. We aim to enhance the context specification in semantic similarity assessments with action lattices. © Springer-Verlag 2004.