An Ontology Design Pattern and Its Use Case for Modeling Material Transformation

Tracking #: 1120-2332

Authors: 
Charles Vardeman II
Adila Krisnadhi
Michelle Cheatham
Krzysztof Janowicz
Holly Ferguson
Pascal Hitzler
Aimee P. C. Buccellato

Responsible editor: 
TBA

Submission type: 
Ontology Description
Abstract: 
In this work we introduce a content Ontology Design Pattern (ODP) to model and reason about material transformations, a concept that occurs in many different domains ranging from computational chemistry, biology, and industrial ecology to architecture. We model the relationships between products, resources, and catalysts in the transformation process as well as the spatial and temporal constraints necessary for a transformation to occur. Both a graphical illustration and a formal axiomatization are provided, and the commonalities and differences to similar ontologies and patterns are discussed. Usage of the pattern is illustrated by applying it to an intuitive and familiar example and by discussing how the pattern is able to address a set of competency questions. Additionally, we present a detailed use case from the domain of sustainable construction that leverages the material transformation pattern in combination with the already existing semantic trajectory ontology design pattern.
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Reviewed

Decision/Status: 
Minor Revision

Solicited Reviews:
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Review #1
By TBA submitted on 19/Jul/2015
Suggestion:
Minor Revision
Review Comment:

[Copied from easychair. Reviews handled outside of SWJ due to EiC co-authorship.]

Review 1
PC member:
Eva Blomqvist
Overall
1: (Minor revision)
evaluation:
Reviewer's
5: (expert)
confidence:
Quality of the
4: (good)
pattern:
Usefulness
(or potential
usefulness)
4: (good)
of the
pattern:
Clarity and
completeness
4: (good)
of the
descriptions:
The paper describes an ODP for representing material transformations. The paper is well-written and clearly describes
all aspects of the pattern, including examples, which makes the pattern easy to reuse by others. However, concerning
the reuse aspect, how is the pattern "advertised" beyond this paper? Ontology engineers may not read research
papers, hence, some dissemination may be necessary to facilitate a wider use of the pattern. Is it present in some
public online pattern catalogue? Or are the authors planning such a catalogue in the future? How do the authors plan
to reach the appropriate communities (which are actually numerous communities) with this pattern? It would be
interesting to include such questions in the discussion and future work section of the paper.
Moreover, an additional concern I have regarding the reusability of this pattern is how feasible it is to reuse for a wider
audience, considering that some of the axioms go beyond the standard version of OWL. Could it be viewed as several
related patterns, i.e. one (or more) that stay within the expressivity of OWL, and then several extended versions if one
wants/needs to go beyond that? Although this is briefly mentioned in the paper, I think it deserves a more thorough
discussion. In particular, it should be made more clear what the pattern looks like and what it can "do" if you only use
the pure OWL part vs. if you include the whole thing. I think that a lot of people who would consider to reuse this
pattern are not even experts on OWL, much less on its extensions, hence, after reading the paper they should be sure
about what the pattern can do for them, and how they should model it, even if they choose to stay within standard
OWL (e.g. to be able to use standard tools and reasoners etc.)
Additional minor issues include:
- I am not sure that "Green Scale Project" is a suitable keyword, is it really something that people would use to try to
easychair.org/conferences/review_for_paper.cgi?a=7672251;paper=2087305#{fr:uBCcnYqvDiyP}
Strona 1 z Comments on Paper 1
17.05.2015, 21:0- I am not sure that "Green Scale Project" is a suitable keyword, is it really something that people would use to try to
find the paper or find out what its content is?
Review:
- Page 2, second column: spell out "wrt."
- The introduction is too long, and part of it seems to be a discussion of related work. Could this be subdivided into
several section, where one could be named "related work" or "related ODPs"?
- Last paragraph of section 1: "In the following..." does that mean section 2, or the rest of the paper?
- Page 3, first column: "has aged a seconds?" -> "has aged a second?"
- Last bullet before section 3: "Given as set materials" -> "Given a set of materials"
- First sentence of 3.1: "pattern in shown" -> "pattern is shown"
- Figure 1, and text referring to it in 3.1: Please consider that many people will print the paper and read it in
black&white. It is nice to have colorful figures, but could you in addition use different lines (dashed, dotted etc.) or
similar patterns, and refer to those instead in the text, to cater for those who print the paper themselves?
(Additionally: yelow -> yellow)
- First paragraph of section 4: "are need" -> "are needed"
Confidential
remarks for
the program
committee:
Time:
- It sounds quite modest when the authors say in the last sentence of the conclusions section that they look forward to
working with experts in other domains to ensure that the pattern is general enough to work also in that domain. One of
the claims was that the pattern IS general enough, hence, this sounds like a disclaimer at the last moment. The
pattern sounds fine to me, so I think the authors could do without this disclaimer and instead end in a more positive
note, e.g. saying that they look forward to applying the pattern in new domains, or similar.
Jan 29, 18:55
Review 2 (superseded by another review)
PC member:
Kurt Sandkuhl
Overall
1: (Minor revision)
evaluation:
Reviewer's
4: (high)
confidence:
Quality of the
4: (good)
pattern:
Usefulness
(or potential
usefulness)
4: (good)
of the
pattern:
Clarity and
completeness
3: (fair)
of the
descriptions:
The paper addresses an ODP to model and reason about material transformation. Although neither ODP nor material
transformation are mainstream subjects or application fields of the semantic web community, it is a relevant
contribution to the field as it presents a well-elaborated ODP and an example how to present actual ODPs in a journal
paper. The paper is well-written and has a structure which fits to its purpose.
Review:
easychair.org/conferences/review_for_paper.cgi?a=7672251;paper=2087305#{fr:uBCcnYqvDiyP}
Some parts of the paper need improvement:
- The paper does not contain any background information about ODP or references to ODP literature. Such information
is required since not all readers of the journal will be familiar with ODP work. Please summarize the relevant
background and state-of-the-art.
- Section 1 nicely introduces the topic of the paper, motivates the need for an ODP and discusses related work. A
reference on DOLCE should be added.
- Section 2: in the problem statement the authors use the terms “input”, “output” and “transformation”. In the
competency questions they switch to “resources” and “products” which (a) is disrupting the line of argumentation and
potentially confusing the reader and (b) creates an association to production processes in manufacturing which are not
necessarily material transformations. The authors should stay with the established terminology in their application
domain. Using terms from another domain will make it more difficult to find and use the ODP, as observed by Hammar
[1] and Lantow [2].
For the “person” example of a border case there should also be a comment that the applicability of the ODP also
depends on whether physical or non-physical properties (identity of the person, opinions, ethic values) are considered.
- Section 3.1:If the authors insist on using “resource” instead of “input” (see comments to section 2), they will need to
differentiate between different kinds of resources as it commonly is done in economics since you need, e.g., resources
consumed by the process and resources performing the transformation process.
The authors mention that tools used in the transformation process could be considered as catalyst. This needs further
elaboration since (a) the semantics of catalyst commonly does not include tools, and (b) catalyst is subclass of
resource and product which means that tools could be produced in a material transformation ???
Typo in 3.1: “yelow”
- Section 3.2 is supposed to illustrate how the pattern can be extended using energy information as an example. Please
discuss what other extensions might be important (e.g., is it relevant to consider the quantity required of the catalyst?)
and whether they could be modeled in a similar way as the energy extension
- Section 3.3: ;aybe the authors should add that the batter and the cake in this example are considered as output
materials. In reality they might just be aggregations or composites of different materials.
Strona 2 z Comments on Paper 1
17.05.2015, 21:0materials. In reality they might just be aggregations or composites of different materials.
- Section 4: The example use case presented in section 4 from my perspective leaves the domain of material
transformation and models manufacturing processes. This disrupts the line of argumentation started in the introduction
and would – if kept as it is – require an additional related work section on ODP or ontologies in manufacturing.
Please include the competency questions for the ontology to be created in this use case.
- References: [10] and [14] are not complete (source missing)
5 out of 15 references are own publications. Please consider reducing the number of self-references
Confidential
remarks for
the program
committee:
Time:
PC member:
Overall
evaluation:
Reviewer's
confidence:
Quality of the
pattern:
Usefulness
(or potential
usefulness)
of the
pattern:
Clarity and
completeness
of the
descriptions:
Review:
Overall impression
If the authors remove the “tools” from argumentation in section 3, stay away from manufacturing processes and
describe the use case with focus on material transformations occurring during production, the paper probably is
acceptable.
At its heart, an ODP includes a small conceptual model essentially building on the meaning of its concepts. If you
introduce ambiguity in this meaning (by leaving the application domain), the axiomatization doesn’t hold for all
meanings and will spoil the ODP.
[1] Hammar, Karl (2014): Ontology Design Patterns: Adoption Challenges and Solutions. Web Enterprise Adoption and
Best Practice and Second International Workshop on Finance and Economics on the Semantic Web Co-located with 11th
European Semantic Web Conference, WaSABi-FEOSW@ESWC 2014, Anissaras, Greece, May 26, 2014.
[2] Lantow, Birger; Sandkuhl, Kurt; Tarasov, Vladimir (2013): Selecting Content Ontology Design Patterns for Ontology
Quality Improvement. Workshop on Knowledge Supply and Ontologies in Information Systems, Warzaw, Poland,
September 23rd, 2013. CEUR online proceedings, vol. 1028.
Mar 06, 08:52
Kurt Sandkuhl
1: (Minor revision)
4: (high)
4: (good)
4: (good)
Review 2
3: (fair)
The paper addresses an ODP to model and reason about material transformation. Although neither ODP nor material
transformation are mainstream subjects or application fields of the semantic web community, it is a relevant
contribution to the field as it presents a well-elaborated ODP and an example how to present actual ODPs in a journal
paper. The paper is well-written and has a structure which fits to its purpose.
Some parts of the paper need improvement:
- The paper does not contain any background information about ODP or references to ODP literature. Such information
is required since not all readers of the journal will be familiar with ODP work. Please summarize the relevant
background and state-of-the-art.
- Section 1 nicely introduces the topic of the paper, motivates the need for an ODP and discusses related work. A
reference on DOLCE should be added.
- Section 2: in the problem statement the authors use the terms “input”, “output” and “transformation”. In the
competency questions they switch to “resources” and “products” which (a) is disrupting the line of argumentation and
potentially confusing the reader and (b) creates an association to production processes in manufacturing which are not
necessarily material transformations. The authors should stay with the established terminology in their application
domain. Using terms from another domain will make it more difficult to find and use the ODP, as observed by Hammar
[1] and Lantow [2].
For the “person” example of a border case there should also be a comment that the applicability of the ODP also
depends on whether physical or non-physical properties (identity of the person, opinions, ethic values) are considered.
- Section 3.1:If the authors insist on using “resource” instead of “input” (see comments to section 2), they will need to
differentiate between different kinds of resources as it commonly is done in economics since you need, e.g., resources
consumed by the process and resources performing the transformation process.
The authors mention that tools used in the transformation process could be considered as catalyst. This needs further
elaboration since (a) the semantics of catalyst commonly does not include tools, and (b) catalyst is subclass of
resource and product which means that tools could be produced in a material transformation ???
Typo in 3.1: “yelow”
- Section 3.2 is supposed to illustrate how the pattern can be extended using energy information as an example. Please
discuss what other extensions might be important (e.g., is it relevant to consider the quantity required of the catalyst?)
and whether they could be modeled in a similar way as the energy extension
- Section 3.3: maybe the authors should add that the batter and the cake in this example are considered as output
materials. In reality they might just be aggregations or composites of different materials.
- Section 4: The example use case presented in section 4 from my perspective leaves the domain of material
transformation and models manufacturing processes. This disrupts the line of argumentation started in the introduction
and would – if kept as it is – require an additional related work section on ODP or ontologies in manufacturing.
Please include the competency questions for the ontology to be created in this use case.
- References: [10] and [14] are not complete (source missing)
easychair.org/conferences/review_for_paper.cgi?a=7672251;paper=2087305#{fr:uBCcnYqvDiyP}
Strona 3 z Comments on Paper 1
17.05.2015, 21:0- References: [10] and [14] are not complete (source missing)
5 out of 15 references are own publications. Please consider reducing the number of self-references
Overall impression
If the authors remove the “tools” from argumentation in section 3, stay away from manufacturing processes and
describe the use case with focus on material transformations occurring during production, the paper probably is
acceptable.
At its heart, an ODP includes a small conceptual model essentially building on the meaning of its concepts. If you
introduce ambiguity in this meaning (by leaving the application domain), the axiomatization doesn’t hold for all
meanings and will spoil the ODP.
Confidential
remarks for
the program
committee:
Time:
[1] Hammar, Karl (2014): Ontology Design Patterns: Adoption Challenges and Solutions. Web Enterprise Adoption and
Best Practice and Second International Workshop on Finance and Economics on the Semantic Web Co-located with 11th
European Semantic Web Conference, WaSABi-FEOSW@ESWC 2014, Anissaras, Greece, May 26, 2014.
[2] Lantow, Birger; Sandkuhl, Kurt; Tarasov, Vladimir (2013): Selecting Content Ontology Design Patterns for Ontology
Quality Improvement. Workshop on Knowledge Supply and Ontologies in Information Systems, Warzaw, Poland,
September 23rd, 2013. CEUR online proceedings, vol. 1028.
Mar 06, 08:55
Review 3
PC member:
Tomi Kauppinen
Overall
2: (Accept)
evaluation:
Reviewer's
5: (expert)
confidence:
Quality of the
5: (excellent)
pattern:
Usefulness
(or potential
5: (excellent)
usefulness) of
the pattern:
Clarity and
completeness
5: (excellent)
of the
descriptions:
This paper is perhaps the best description of an ontology design pattern I have come across. It is very well written,
clearly structured. And most importantly: it presents fluently all needed components from motivation to the pattern
itself and to application via a use case. It would be interesting to see the application of the ODP in some other use
Review:
cases as well but that will be well worth further studies.
Confidential
remarks for
the program
committee:
Time:
In summary: I recommend to publish the paper as it is.
Apr 14, 13:44