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This paper describes the step-by-step processes towards the formalization of a core ontology for missions and capabilities in systems of systems, and the development of a specific system of systems domain ontology from the formalized ontology. The study traces the ontology development process through the SABIOx methodology’s requirements, setup, capture, design, and implementation phases. In this process, we demonstrate the core ontology’s usability and reusability. Usability refers to the ontology’s adequacy for specific use as a reference point for SoS knowledge exploration for development and operational purposes, and reusability refers to the ontology’s adequacy for several uses, such as facilitating the understanding of different domain-specific systems of systems. This demonstration is done in three steps: formalization of the core ontology, exploration of the usefulness of this formalization, and development of a domain ontology from the core ontology. These result in: the incorporation of systematic ontology development processes; the application of ontology tools for machine readability; coherence and consistency checking of the ontology artifact; querying support for the ontology knowledge base; and testing of the core knowledge with a domain-specific system of systems. An alignment of these aspects provides different points of view of how a system of systems can be formulated, how the concepts collectively describe the development of an SoS emergent behavior, and how the ontology knowledge base can be explored to support decision frameworks guiding a system of systems.

A well-engineered strategy should specify and integrate three capabilities: process, method, and domain terminology specifications. The domain terminology of different strategies should be based on reference vocabularies. Thus, a process ontology should be a common reference since it considers cross-cutting concerns for different domains. This paper defines and represents the main concepts of a process ontology. This process ontology is placed at the core level in the context of a five-tier ontological architecture, where at the top of it there is a single foundational ontology. The practical use of a foundational ontology is to semantically enrich the lower-level ontologies. For example, an ontology at the foundational level can enrich a process core ontology. In turn, the ontologies at the lower level of a core one, such as those at the domain level, can benefit from reusing and extending the core concepts. Therefore, a process core ontology can be considered as a reusable resource to semantically enrich domain ontologies. In an attempt to discuss the applicability of the developed process core ontology, this paper illustrates the semantic enrichment of two top-domain ontologies. By using the process ontology—and other core ontologies—as common terminological references, the domain ontologies used in the different strategies are conceptually harmonized. In this way, strategies ensure terminological uniformity and consistency, thus facilitating the understanding of process and method specifications. In addition, the built process core ontology is compared with another process core ontology concerning its ontological internal quality. Then, recommendations and actions for improvement were performed.

Background Within the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry, many ontologies represent the execution of a plan specification as a process in which a realizable entity that concretizes the plan specification, a “realizable concretization” (RC), is realized. This representation, which we call the “RC-account”, provides a straightforward way to relate a plan specification to the entity that bears the realizable concretization and the process that realizes the realizable concretization. However, the adequacy of the RC-account has not been evaluated in the scientific literature. In this manuscript, we provide this evaluation and, thereby, give ontology developers sound reasons to use or not use the RC-account pattern. Results Analysis of the RC-account reveals that it is not adequate for representing failed plans. If the realizable concretization is flawed in some way, it is unclear what (if any) relation holds between the realizable entity and the plan specification. If the execution (i.e., realization) of the realizable concretization fails to carry out the actions given in the plan specification, it is unclear under the RC-account how to directly relate the failed execution to the entity carrying out the instructions given in the plan specification. These issues are exacerbated in the presence of changing plans. Conclusions We propose two solutions for representing failed plans. The first uses the Common Core Ontologies ‘prescribed by’ relation to connect a plan specification to the entity or process that utilizes the plan specification as a guide. The second, more complex, solution incorporates the process of creating a plan (in the sense of an intention to execute a plan specification) into the representation of executing plan specifications. We hypothesize that the first solution (i.e., use of ‘prescribed by’) is adequate for most situations. However, more research is needed to test this hypothesis as well as explore the other solutions presented in this manuscript.

Aim/Purpose: The paper introduces and develops the Core Ontology for Customs Procedures (COCP), a modular and scalable knowledge model designed to address the complexities of customs operations by formally representing operational, regulatory, security, transport, and financial transaction knowledge in alignment with global standards. Background: Customs authorities face increasing challenges related to evolving regulations, inconsistent documentation, and the lack of interoperability in existing systems. While some ontologies exist, they are often domain-specific and fail to provide a unified structure capable of supporting the breadth of customs activities and automation needs. COCP responds to this gap by offering a comprehensive and integrative solution. Methodology: COCP was developed using the NeOn scenario-based methodology, which supports iterative development and resource reuse. The ontology went through multiple phases including requirements specification based on competency questions, structured knowledge acquisition from authoritative sources, formal implementation in OWL using Protégé, axiomatization of semantic rules, and validation through reasoning tools, question-based testing, and SPARQL-based real-world scenarios. Contribution: The paper contributes a formalized and validated ontology that unifies key customs processes and ensures semantic consistency across modules. It incorporates internationally recognized models such as the World Customs Organization (WCO) Data Model and Harmonized System (HS) Codes, allowing it to function as a foundation for legal compliance, operational efficiency, and AI integration. COCP is structured for modularity, making it adaptable and extendable to changing regulatory and technical environments. Findings: COCP helps standardize customs procedures by promoting consistent data exchange, goods classification, and declaration handling across borders. It supports legal compliance and risk management through formalized rule definitions and reasoning mechanisms. The ontology also facilitates integration with intelligent technologies by providing machine-readable structures. Recommendations for Practitioners: Customs authorities and operational stakeholders are advised to adopt COCP to automate customs clearance, ensure uniform regulatory compliance, and integrate intelligent tools for decision support. The ontology's standardized structure can improve coordination among actors and reduce procedural delays. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers are encouraged to expand COCP’s application to specialized customs domains, such as trade sanctions, bonded zones, or e-commerce-related imports. Opportunities also exist to explore its integration with machine learning and natural language processing for automated knowledge updates and deeper analytics. Impact on Society: The implementation of COCP can lead to faster, more transparent, and legally compliant customs processes, reducing friction in global trade and enhancing public trust in customs governance. By supporting streamlined procedures and intelligent automation, the ontology contributes to more effective and secure international commerce. Future Research: Future directions include extending COCP to region-specific and domain-specific customs contexts, strengthening its interoperability with diverse platforms, and incorporating AI-driven reasoning systems for advanced automation. Ensuring the ontology remains adaptable to continuous legal and procedural changes will be essential for sustaining its value in global customs environments.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the construction of a core ontology for food. To construct the core ontology, the authors propose here an approach called, yet another methodology for ontology plus (YAMO+). The goal is to exhibit the construction of a core ontology for a domain, which can be further extended and converted into application ontologies. Design/methodology/approach To motivate the construction of the core ontology for food, the authors have first articulated a set of application scenarios. The idea is that the constructed core ontology can be used to build application-specific ontologies for those scenarios. As part of the developmental approach to core ontology, the authors have proposed a methodology called YAMO+. It is designed following the theory of analytico-synthetic classification. YAMO+ is generic in nature and can be applied to build core ontologies for any domain. Findings Construction of a core ontology needs a thorough understanding of the domain and domain requirements. There are various challenges involved in constructing a core ontology as discussed in this paper. The proposed approach has proven to be sturdy enough to face the challenges that the construction of a core ontology poses. It is observed that core ontology is amenable to conversion to an application ontology. Practical implications The constructed core ontology for domain food can be readily used for developing application ontologies related to food. The proposed methodology YAMO+ can be applied to build core ontologies for any domain. Originality/value As per the knowledge, the proposed approach is the first attempt based on the study of the state of the art literature, in terms of, a formal approach to the design of a core ontology. Also, the constructed core ontology for food is the first one as there is no such ontology available on the web for domain food.

Events are central aspect of many semantic ambient media applications such as surveillance, smart homes, automobiles, and others. Existing models for events typically do not follow a systematic development approach, are conceptually narrow with respect to event features, and their semantics is often ambiguous. This makes the communication between and integration of different event-based components and event-based semantic ambient media applications a challenging task. In this paper, we present the Event-Model-F, a formal model of events based on the foundational ontology DOLCE+DnS Ultralite (DUL). The Event-Model-F provides comprehensive support to represent time and space, objects and persons, mereological, causal, and correlative relationships between events, and different interpretations of the same event. It is developed following a pattern-oriented ontology design approach and can be easily extended by domain specific ontologies. We introduce the design and implementation of an application programming interface that allows for easy integration of the Event-Model-F in arbitrary applications. The use of the Event-Model-F is demonstrated at the example of a socio-technical system of emergency response and implemented in the SemaPlorer+ + application for creating and sharing event descriptions.

This article presents a set of Sensitive Business Process (SBP) modeling requirements and proposes a multi-criteria evaluation framework to appraise the expressiveness of currently widely used business process modelling formalisms to select the most suitable for SBP representation. The modelling of SBPs, be they process oriented or knowledge oriented, presents special requirements dictated by several factors: the highly dynamic complexity and flexibility of the processes; the high number of critical activities requiring intensive acquisition, sharing, storage and (re)use of very specific crucial knowledge; the specificity and diversity of information and knowledge sources; and the high degree of collaboration and interaction (intra/inter-organizational) among participants (who apply, create and share a great amount of very important tacit organizational knowledge, in order to achieve collective objectives and create value). As SBP models get more complex, the selection of the appropriate modeling formalism gains in importance to improve the identification of crucial knowledge that is mobilized and created by these processes. Furthermore, the result of the evaluation led us to justify the choice of the better one positioned nowadays, the standard BPMN 2.0. Besides, the authors have illustrated the practical applicability of this specification on a medical process in the context of the organization of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia.

The problem of WordNet-based ontology construction was widely investigated and many effective methods have been proposed in China. The utilizations of the hierarchy structure of WordNet, the digraph structure of WordNet and auxiliary resources are main measures in the methods. Usually, the methods are facing three fundamental difficulties, the computation of semantic similarity, the construction of core ontology and the development of auxiliary resources. Through our reviews of previous researches, we find several inadequacies such as low utilization ratio of WordNet and the lack of standardized evaluation and give some suggestions for future works.

In this article we describe two core ontologies of law that specify knowledge that is common to all domains of law. The first one, FOLaw describes and explains dependencies between types of knowledge in legal reasoning; the second one, LRI-Core ontology, captures the main concepts in legal information processing. Although FOLaw has shown to be of high practical value in various applied European ICT projects, its reuse is rather limited as it is rather concerned with the structure of legal reasoning than with legal knowledge itself: as many other \"legal core ontologies\";, FOLaw is therefore rather an epistemological framework than an ontology. Therefore, we also developed LRI-Core. As we argue here that legal knowledge is based to a large extend on common-sense knowledge, LRI-Core is particularly inspired by research on abstract commonsense concepts. The main categories of LRI-Core are: physical, mental and abstract concepts. Roles cover in particular social worlds. Another special category are occurrences; terms that denote events and situations. We illustrate the use of LRI-Core with an ontology for Dutch criminal law, developed in the e-Court European project. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]