OntologySummit2013 Building Ontologies to Meet Evaluation Criteria Synthesis

= OntologySummit2013 Track C: Building Ontologies to Meet Evaluation Criteria =

Track Co-champions: MatthewWest & MikeBennett

Background
There are two approaches that can be taken to assuring the quality of an ontology:

1.	Measure the quality of the result against the requirements that it should meet.

2.	Use a process or methodology which will ensure the quality of the resultant ontology.

If you wait to the end of ontology development to measure the quality, the costs of correction of any errors are likely to be high. Therefore using a process or methodology that builds quality into an ontology can have significant benefits. At present, however, it is unclear if there is any process or methodology that, if followed, is sufficient to guarantee the quality of a resulting ontology, and most of those that do exist are relatively informal and tend to require expert support.

A consideration in evaluating ontologies is the different scenarios in which they are used. For example, one might be used as a formal conceptual model to inform development and another might be used in an ontology based application. Both the evaluation criteria and the development methodologies employed may vary widely.

Mission
To investigate the state of the art in ontology development methodologies, including key achievements and key gaps that currently exist.

Objectives
1.	Examine the explicit and implicit methodologies that are known to exist.

2.	Understand the role that upper ontologies play in ontology development methodologies.

3.	Understand the role of ontological patterns in ontology development methodologies.

4.	Identify how to apply the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of ontology evaluation identified by the other tracks, within the applicable development methodologies.

5.	Identifying how to frame the applicable ontology development methodologies within the frameworks of established quality assurance regimes (such as ISO 9000 and CMMI) for industrial applications.

Synthesis & Track Input to the Communique
see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2013-04/msg00000.html