Mereotopological Patterns for Ontology Evolution and Debugging

Abstract

In this paper the foundational principles and the application of a mereotopological theory, the Region Connection Calculus, for controlling the revision of formal ontologies by means of visual arrangements is presented. The visual representation of logical relationships between concepts of an ontology is defined, and it is computed by means of an automated theorem prover. The user can recognize mereotopological patterns in the visual representation, particularly those representing anomalies in the ontology. An intelligent tool called Paella is designed and implemented for this task. Also, the extension to this formalism for managing uncertainty in concept reasoning is described.