Concept signatures and semantic drift

Abstract

Ontology evolution is the process of incrementally and consistently adapting an existing ontology to changes in the relevant domain. Semantic drift refers to how ontology concepts' intentions gradually change as the domain evolves. Normally, a semantic drift captures small domain changes that are hard to detect with traditional ontology management tools or ontology learning methods, but may be important to the maintenance of the ontology. This paper discusses a new approach to detecting semantic drift that makes use of concept signatures reflecting the textual references to concepts over time. Comparing how signatures change over time, we see how concepts' semantic content evolves and how their relationships to other concepts gradually reflect these changes. An experiment with the DNV's business sector ontology from 2004 and 2008 demonstrates the value of this approach to ontology evolution. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.