Fundamental theories of ontology and development of an environment for ontology construction

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Although a few convincing ontological theories exist, there is few environment for supporting ontology development based on such a theory. This research has been done aiming at development of fundamental theories for ontology design ＆ construction and that of a support system of an ontology based on that theory. The research is firmly based on the principal investigator's research policy, that is, "content-oriented AI" which is an enterprise of bridging the gap between a theory and practice. The major achievements include:(1) theories for is-a and part-of links, a relation, and a role concept. The is-a theory defines a class and an instance by introducing "the intrinsic property" of a thing which helps distinguish between is-a and part-of relations. The theory of a relation introduces "whole concept" and "relational concept" which are two sides of a concrete concept composed of more than one component. The theory of roles is very useful to conceptualize domain concepts which are full of roles.(2) Development of guidelines for identifying role concepts in the world of interest. The guideline is based on the theory of roles developed. It exploits the power of task ontology and utilizes the task-specified roles and domain-specified roles.(3) A support system which can guide an author of an ontology has been built. The system is a product thanks to the theories and guideline we developed. It has been applied to a "real" problem, that is, construction of an oil-refinery plant ontology and its model. The evaluation shows that its performance is very satisfactory.The research thus can be concluded that it has made a contribution to the "content-oriented" research.