Towards Ontology-based standards? Howard Mason 26-March-2009 Ontology Summit 2009 – Synthesis Panel

2 What is a standard? A standard is nothing more than an agreement across a particular community of interest, to achieve mutual benefit, based on the best available knowledge and technology. Implementation is voluntary, unless mandated by legal or commercial constraints.

3 Key principles Consensus - The views of all interests are taken into account: manufacturers, vendors and users, consumer groups, testing laboratories, governments, engineering professions and research organizations. Industry wide - Global solutions to satisfy industries and customers worldwide. Voluntary - International standardization is market driven and therefore based on voluntary involvement of all interests in the market-place.

4 The stages of standardisation Agree the need and the scope Agree the technical content Formal approval

5 Key requirements Build on existing international standards and models –Capture/select content and implicit knowledge Identify unambiguous definitions of ontological components - URI Support rules and constraints Support ontology definitions through multiple representation technologies Configuration management Support with efficient tools Publish ontologies in usable forms Use across multiple sectors

6 Opportunities for use Support development and exploitation Lists of permitted values for a property –Eg country codes, military ranks, academic degrees Traditional product standards (10K+) –defined by characteristics –permitted values and tolerances Common concepts across standards Information models –entities, attributes and relationships Validation of models Integration of models Extraction of ontological components Simplification of presentation to end users

7 Specific ideas to explore Guidelines and development methods for ontology- based standards Based on existing standards –Ontology for product structures –Units of measure – UnitsML/BIPM/ISO TC12 –MathML –ISO for Oil and Gas –Structural Analysis – ISO –OAG specifications –Financial specifications –ISO – Open Technical Dictionary –Component ontologies – PLIB – ISO –ISO – Enterprise model –Product properties –Industrial Automation components Harvesting resulting standard ontologies