creator Bernd Krieg-Brückner, DFKI (c) version 0.4
transition relation corresponding to executesTask
a crosswise relation between devices intended for consistency checking: if A requiresDevice B, then C hasDevice A and C hasDevice B must hold for a common ancestor C of A and B.
principally from Disease to Impairment, but also from Impairment to Impairment, thus transitive; see also special transitivity for subrelations
note also Data Properties - hasBirthDate
A datatype property that encodes values from a datatype for an Entity. There are several ways to encode values in DOLCE (Ultralite): 1) Directly assert an xsd:_ value to an Entity by using hasDataValue 2) Assert a Region for an Entity by using hasRegion, and then assert an xsd:_ value to that Region, by using hasRegionDataValue 3) Assert a Quality for an Entity by using hasQuality, then assert a Region for that Quality, and assert an xsd:_ value to that Region, by using hasRegionDataValue 4) When the value is required, but not directly observed, assert a Parameter for an xsd:_ value by using hasParameterDataValue, and then associate the Parameter to an Entity by using isConstraintFor 5) When the value is required, but not directly observed, you can also assert a Parameter for a Region by using parametrizes, and then assert an xsd:_ value to that Region, by using hasRegionDataValue The five approaches obey different requirements. For example, a simple value can be easily asserted by using pattern (1), but if one needs to assert an interval between two values, a Region should be introduced to materialize that interval, as pattern (2) suggests. Furthermore, if one needs to distinguish the individual Quality of a value, e.g. the particular nature of the density of a substance, pattern (3) can be used. Patterns (4) and (5) should be used instead when a constraint or a selection is modeled, independently from the actual observation of values in the real world.
ha valore
has data value
A datatype property that encodes values from xsd:date for an Event; a same Event can have more than one xsd:date value: begin date, end date, date at which the interval holds, as well as dates expressed in different formats: xsd:gYear, xsd:dateTime, etc.
evento ha data
has event date
A datatype property that encodes values from xsd:date for a TimeInterval; a same TimeInterval can have more than one xsd:date value: begin date, end date, date at which the interval holds, as well as dates expressed in different formats: xsd:gYear, xsd:dateTime, etc.
has interval date
intervallo ha data
note as a data item, e.g. a note on a product to be purchased in a shopping list
Notiz
note
Parametrizes values from a datatype. For example, a Parameter MinimumAgeForDriving hasParameterDataValue 18 on datatype xsd:int, in the Italian traffic code. In this example, MinimumAgeForDriving isDefinedIn the Norm ItalianTrafficCodeAgeDriving. More complex parametrization requires workarounds. E.g. AgeRangeForDrugUsage could parametrize data value: 14 to 50 on the datatype: xsd:int. Since complex datatypes are not allowed in OWL1.0, a solution to this can only work by creating two 'sub-parameters': MinimumAgeForDrugUsage (that hasParameterDataValue 14) and MaximumAgeForDrugUsage (that hasParameterDataValue 50), which are components of (cf. hasComponent) the main Parameter AgeRangeForDrugUsage. Ordering on subparameters can be created by using or specializing the object property 'precedes'.
has parameter data value
name as a data item, e.g. the name/title of a recipe
Name
name
endurance | stamina
Any Entity that cannot be located in space-time. E.g. mathematical entities: formal semantics elements, regions within dimensional spaces, etc.
Abstract
Astratto
An Event with at least one Agent that isParticipantIn it, and that executes a Task that typically isDefinedIn a Plan, Workflow, Project, etc.
Action
Azione
A quantity, independently from how it is measured, computed, etc.
Amount
Betrag
Quantità
an AnnotationDocument for a single Transition of an Episode
Due to the changing times, also an alternative for a PhysicalAgent
Biological object
Chemical object
A special kind of Situation that allows to include time indexing for the classifies relation in situations. For example, if a Situation s 'my old cradle is used in these days as a flower pot' isSettingFor the entity 'my old cradle' and the TimeIntervals '8June2007' and '10June2007', and we know that s satisfies a functional Description for aesthetic objects, which defines the Concepts 'flower pot' and 'flower', then we also need to know what concept classifies 'my old cradle' at what time. In order to solve this issue, we need to create a sub-situation s' for the classification time: 'my old cradle is a flower pot in 8June2007'. Such sub-situation s' isPartOf s.
Classification
Classificazione
Any container for entities that share one or more common properties. E.g. "stone objects", "the nurses", "the Louvre Aegyptian collection", all the elections for the Italian President of the Republic. A collection is not a logical class: a collection is a first-order entity, while a class is second-order.
Collection
Collezione
A Collection whose members are agents, e.g. "the nurses", "the Italian rockabilly fans". Collectives, facon de parler, can act as agents, although they are not assumed here to be agents (they are even disjoint from the class SocialAgent). This is represented by admitting collectives in the range of the relations having Agent in their domain or range.
Collective
Collettivo
A SocialAgent that is actedBy agents that are (and act as) members of a Collective. A collective agent can have roles that are also roles of those agents. For example, in sociology, a 'group action' is the situation in which a number of people (that result to be members of a collective) in a given area behave in a coordinated way in order to achieve a (often common) goal. The Agent in such a Situation is not single, but a CollectiveAgent (a Group). This can be generalized to the notion of social movement, which assumes a large Community or even the entire Society as agents. The difference between a CollectiveAgent and an Organization is that a Description that introduces a CollectiveAgent is also one that unifies the corresponding Collective. In practice, this difference makes collective agents 'less stable' than organizations, because they have a dedicated, publicly recognizable Description that is conceived to introduce them.
Agente collettivo
Collective agent
Community
Comunità
A Concept is a SocialObject, and isDefinedIn some Description; once defined, a Concept can be used in other Description(s). If a Concept isDefinedIn exactly one Description, see the LocalConcept class. The classifies relation relates Concept(s) to Entity(s) at some TimeInterval
Concept
Concetto
A collection whose members are 'unified', i.e. organized according to a certain schema that can be represented by a Description. Typically, a configuration is the collection that emerges out of a composed entity: an industrial artifact, a plan, a discourse, etc. E.g. a physical book has a configuration provided by the part-whole schema that holds together its cover, pages, ink. That schema, based on the individual relations between the book and its parts, can be represented in a reified way by means of a (structural) description, which is said to 'unify' the book configuration.
Configuration
Configurazione
the additional subclassOf DesignedArtifact is new here
A Description is a SocialObject that represents a conceptualization. It can be thought also as a 'descriptive context' that uses or defines concepts in order to create a view on a 'relational context' (cf. Situation) out of a set of data or observations. For example, a Plan is a Description of some actions to be executed by agents in a certain way, with certain parameters; a Diagnosis is a Description that provides an interpretation for a set of observed entities, etc.
Description
Descrizione
A PhysicalArtifact that is also described by a Design. This excludes simple recycling or refunctionalization of natural objects. Most common sense 'artifacts' can be included in this class: cars, lamps, houses, chips, etc.
Artefatto progettato
Designed artifact
Anything: real, possible, or imaginary, which some modeller wants to talk about for some purpose.
Entity
Entità
BKB: explicit union deleted InformationEntity deleted
a linear Sequence of Transitions, each governed by a Task
Any physical, social, or mental process, event, or state. More theoretically, events can be classified in different ways, possibly based on 'aspect' (e.g. stative, continuous, accomplishement, achievement, etc.), on 'agentivity' (e.g. intentional, natural, etc.), or on 'typical participants' (e.g. human, physical, abstract, food, etc.). Here no special direction is taken, and the following explains why: events are related to observable situations, and they can have different views at a same time. If a position has to be suggested here anyway, the participant-based classification of events seems the most stable and appropriate for many modelling problems. (1) Alternative aspectual views Consider a same event 'rock erosion in the Sinni valley': it can be conceptualized as an accomplishment (what has brought a certain state to occur), as an achievement (the state resulting from a previous accomplishment), as a punctual event (if we collapse the time interval of the erosion into a time point), or as a transition (something that has changed a state to a different one). In the erosion case, we could therefore have good motivations to shift from one aspect to another: a) causation focus, b) effectual focus, c) historical condensation d) transition (causality). The different views refer to the same event, but are still different: how to live with this seeming paradox? A typical solution e.g. in linguistics (cf. Levin's aspectual classes) and in DOLCE Full (cf. WonderWeb D18 axiomatization) is to classify events based on aspectual differences. But this solution would create different identities for a same event, where the difference is only based on the modeller's attitude. An alternative solution is applied here, and exploits the notion of (observable) Situation; a Situation is a view, consistent with a Description, which can be observed of a set of entities. It can also be seen as a 'relational context' created by an observer on the basis of a 'frame'. Therefore, a Situation allows to create a context where each particular view can have a proper identity, while the Event preserves its own identity. For example, ErosionAsAccomplishment is a Situation where rock erosion is observed as a process leading to a certain achievement: the conditions (roles, parameters) that suggest such view are stated in a Description, which acts as a 'theory of accomplishments'. Similarly, ErosionAsTransition is a Situation where rock erosion is observed as an event that has changed a state to another: the conditions for such interpretation are stated in a different Description, which acts as a 'theory of state transitions'. Consider that in no case the Event is changed or enriched in parts by the aspectual view. (2) Alternative intentionality views Similarly to aspectual views, several intentionality views can be provided for a same Event. For example, one can investigate if an avalanche has been caused by immediate natural forces, or if there is any hint of an intentional effort to activate those natural forces. Also in this case, the Event as such has not different identities, while the causal analysis generates situations with different identities, according to what Description is taken for interpreting the Event. On the other hand, if the possible actions of an Agent causing the starting of an avalanche are taken as parts of the Event, then this makes its identity change, because we are adding a part to it. Therefore, if intentionality is a criterion to classify events or not depends on if an ontology designer wants to consider causality as a relevant dimension for events' identity. (3) Alternative participant views A slightly different case is when we consider the basic participants to an Event. In this case, the identity of the Event is affected by the participating objects, because it depends on them. For example, if snow, mountain slopes, wind, waves, etc. are considered as an avalanche basic participants, or if we also want to add water, human agents, etc., makes the identity of an avalanche change. Anyway, this approach to event classification is based on the designer's choices, and more accurately mirrors lexical or commonsense classifications (see. e.g. WordNet 'supersenses' for verb synsets). Ultimately, this discussion has no end, because realists will keep defending the idea that events in reality are not changed by the way we describe them, while constructivists will keep defending the idea that, whatever 'true reality' is about, it can't be modelled without the theoretical burden of how we observe and describe it. Both positions are in principle valid, but, if taken too radically, they focus on issues that are only partly relevant to the aim of computational ontologies, which only attempt to assist domain experts in representing what they want to conceptualize about a certain portion of reality according to their own ideas. For this reason, in this ontology both events and situations are allowed, together with descriptions, in order to encode the modelling needs independently from the position (if any) chosen by the designer.
Event
Evento
A Concept that classifies an Event . An event type describes how an Event should be interpreted, executed, expected, seen, etc., according to the Description that the EventType isDefinedIn (or used in)
Event type
Tipo di evento
A CollectiveAgent whose acting agents conceptualize a same SocialRelation .
Group
Gruppo
A Concept that isDefinedIn exactly 1 Description. For example, the Concept 'coffee' in a 'preparesCoffee' relation can be defined in that relation, and for all other Description(s) that use it, the isConceptUsedIn property should be applied. Notice therefore that not necessarily all Concept(s) isDefinedIn exactly 1 Description.
Local concept
A person in the physical commonsense intuition: 'have you seen that person walking down the street?'
Natural person
Persona fisica
Norm
Norma
Any physical, social, or mental object, or a substance
Object
Oggetto
BKB: Agent deleted (still exists as PhysicalAgent, SocialAgent)
BKB: explicit disjoint union deleted should Object, Abstract, Event, Quality be disjoint?
A physical object with biological characteristics, typically that organisms can self-reproduce.
Organism
Organismo
An internally structured, conventionally created SocialAgent, needing a specific Role and Agent that plays it, in order to act.
Un agente sociale strutturato internamente e creato convenzionalmente. Per agire, ha bisogno di ruoli e agenti che li ricoprano.
Organization
Organizzazione
A Concept that classifies a Region; the difference between a Region and a Parameter is that regions represent sets of observable values, e.g. the height of a given building, while parameters represent constraints or selections on observable values, e.g. 'VeryHigh'. Therefore, parameters can also be used to constrain regions, e.g. VeryHigh on a subset of values of the Region Height applied to buildings, or to add an external selection criterion , such as measurement units, to regions, e.g. Meter on a subset of values from the Region Length applied to the Region Length applied to roads.
Parameter
Parametro
A PhysicalObject that is capable of self-representing (conceptualizing) a Description in order to plan an Action. A PhysicalAgent is a substrate for (actsFor) a Social Agent
Agente fisico
Physical agent
Any PhysicalObject that isDescribedBy a Plan . This axiomatization is weak, but allows to talk of artifacts in a very general sense, i.e. including recycled objects, objects with an intentional functional change, natural objects that are given a certain function, even though they are not modified or structurally designed, etc. PhysicalArtifact(s) are not considered disjoint from PhysicalBody(s), in order to allow a dual classification when needed. E.g., FunctionalSubstance(s) are included here as well. Immaterial (non-physical) artifacts (e.g. texts, ideas, cultural movements, corporations, communities, etc. can be modelled as social objects (see SocialObject), which are all 'artifactual' in the weak sense assumed here.
Artefatto fisico
Physical artifact
Physical value of a physical object, e.g. density, color, etc.
Caratteristica fisica
Physical attribute
Physical bodies are PhysicalObject(s), for which we tend to neutralize any possible artifactual character. They can have several granularity levels: geological, chemical, physical, biological, etc.
Physical body
A PhysicalContainer can be either: - a Designed Container as a PhysicalArtifact - a BiologicalContainer as an OrganismPart
Physical container
A constituent is a component PhysicalObject, graded with Intensity up to level 6. An ingredient is a component PhysicalObject, graded with Significance up to level 3
Any Object that has a proper space region. The prototypical physical object has also an associated mass, but the nature of its mass can greatly vary based on the epistemological status of the object (scientifically measured, subjectively possible, imaginary).
Oggetto fisico
Physical object
BKB: disjointness between PhysicalObject and SocialObject deleted because NaturalPerson=SocialPerson is introduced for simplicity
A physical object that is inherently located; for example, a water area.
Luogo fisico
Physical place
A location, in a very generic sense: a political geographic entity (Roma, Lesotho), a non-material location determined by the presence of other entities ("the area close to Roma"), pivot events or signs ("the area where the helicopter fell"), complements of other entities ("the area under the table"), etc. In this generic sense, a Place is an "approximate" location. For an "absolute" location, see the class SpaceRegion
Luogo
Place
A Description having an explicit Goal, to be achieved by executing the plan
Piano
Plan
Plan executions are situations that proactively satisfy a plan. Subplan executions are proper parts of the whole plan execution.
Esecuzione di piano
Plan execution
scene after a Transition, capturing postconditions
scene before a Transition, capturing preconditions
This is a placeholder for events that are considered in their evolution, or anyway not strictly dependent on agents, tasks, and plans. See Event class for some thoughts on classifying events. See also 'Transition'.
Process
Processo
A Plan that defines Role(s), Task(s), and a specific structure for tasks to be executed in relation to goals to be achieved, in order to achieve the main goal of the project. In other words, a project is a plan with a subgoal structure and multiple roles and tasks.
Progetto
Project
Any aspect of an Entity (but not a part of it), which cannot exist without that Entity. For example, the way the surface of a specific PhysicalObject looks like is a Quality, while the encoding of that Quality into e.g. a PhysicalAttribute should be modeled as a Region. From the design viewpoint, the Quality-Region distinction is useful only when individual aspects of an Entity are considered in a domain of discourse. For example, in an automotive context, it would be irrelevant to consider the aspects of car windows for a specific car, unless the factory wants to check a specific window against design parameters (anomaly detection). On the other hand, in an antiques context, the individual aspects for a specific piece of furniture are a major focus of attention, and may constitute the actual added value, because the design parameters for old furniture are often not fixed, and may not be viewed as 'anomalies'.
Quality
Qualità
Any region in a dimensional space (a dimensional space is a maximal Region), which can be used as a value for a quality of an Entity . For example, TimeInterval, SpaceRegion, PhysicalAttribute, Amount, SocialAttribute are all subclasses of Region. Regions are not data values in the ordinary knowledge representation sense; in order to get patterns for modelling data, see the properties: representsDataValue and hasDataValue
Region
Regione
Role
Ruolo
a situation, i.e. reification of participating objects, agents, etc., before (PreScene) or after (PostScene) a Transition
a Collection of entities of the same class, with a succedes relation (often succ, i.e. directly succedes in time), and hasFirst, hasLast
A view, consistent with ('satisfying') a Description, on a set of entities. It can also be seen as a 'relational context' created by an observer on the basis of a 'frame' (i.e. a Description). For example, a PlanExecution is a context including some actions executed by agents according to certain parameters and expected tasks to be achieved from a Plan; a DiagnosedSituation is a context of observed entities that is interpreted on the basis of a Diagnosis, etc. Situation is also able to represent reified n-ary relations, where isSettingFor is the top-level relation for all binary projections of the n-ary relation. If used in a transformation pattern for n-ary relations, the designer should take care of creating only one subclass of Situation for each n-ary relation, otherwise the 'identification constraint' (Calvanese et al., IJCAI 2001) could be violated.
Situation
Situazione
Any individual whose existence is granted simply by its social communicability and capability of action (through some PhysicalAgent).
Agente sociale
Social agent
Any Object that exists only within some communication Event, in which at least one PhysicalObject participates in. In other words, all objects that have been or are created in the process of social communication: for the sake of communication (InformationObject), for incorporating new individuals (SocialAgent, Place), for contextualizing existing entities (Situation), for collecting existing entities (Collection), or for describing existing entities (Description, Concept). Being dependent on communication, all social objects need to be expressed by some information object (information object are self-expressing).
Oggetto sociale
Social object
Any Region in a dimensional space that is used to represent some characteristic of a SocialObject, e.g. judgment values, social scalars, statistical attributes over a collection of entities, etc.
Caratteristica sociale
Social attribute
A SocialAgent that needs the existence of a specific NaturalPerson in order to act (but the lifetime of the NaturalPerson has only to overlap that of the SocialPerson).
Persona sociale
Social person
Formerly: Person (changed to avoid confusion with commonsense intuition)
Any Region in a dimensional space that is used to localize an Entity ; i.e., it is not used to represent some characteristic (e.g. it excludes time intervals, colors, size values, judgment values, etc.). Differently from a Place , a space region has a specific dimensional space.
Regione di spazio
Space region
An EventType that classifies an Action to be executed. For example, reaching a destination is a task that can be executed by performing certain actions, e.g. driving a car, buying a train ticket, etc. The actions to execute a task can also be organized according to a Plan that is not the same as the one that defines the task (if any). For example, reaching a destination could be defined by a plan to get on holidays, while the plan to execute the task can consist of putting some travels into a sequence.
Task
Any Region in a dimensional space that aims at representing time.
Intervallo di tempo
Time interval
A Collection whose members are the maximal set of individuals that share the same (named) type, e.g. "the gem stones", "the Italians". This class is very useful to apply a variety of the so-called "ClassesAsValues" design pattern, when it is used to talk about the extensional aspect of a class. An alternative variety of the pattern applies to the intensional aspect of a class, and the class Concept should be used instead.
Collezione di un tipo
Type collection
Units of measure are conceptualized here as parameters on regions, which can be valued as datatype values.
Unit of measure
Unità di misura
A Plan that defines Role(s), Task(s), and a specific structure for tasks to be executed, usually supporting the work of an Organization
Workflow
Esecuzione di workflow
Workflow execution
A rapid loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain
Apoplex | Schlaganfall
Apoplexy | Stroke
Cardiac disease
Herzerkrankung
An inflammation of the lining of the stomach
Gastritis
Gastritis | Magenschleimhautentzündung
Gastroesophageal reflux disease
Gastroösophageale Refluxkrankheit
Hemiparesis is weakness of the entire left or right side of the body
Hemiparesis
High blood pressure
Hypertension
Hypertonie | Bluthochdruck
An abnormally high level of uric acid in the blood
Hyperuricaemia
Hyperurikämie | Gicht
die Ernährung beeinträchtigende Krankheit
Neurodermatitis
Neurodermitis
A health endangering amount of body fat
Adipositas | Fettleibigkeit
Obesity
A disease of bones that leads to an increased risk of fracture
Osteoporose
Osteoporosis
palsy | paralysis
An inflammation of the pancreas
Pancreatitis
Pankreatitis | Bauchspeicheldrüsenentzündung
Parkinson's disease | idiopathic parkinsonism | primary parkinsonism | hypokinetic rigid syndrome | paralysis agitans
paralysis agitans
physische Krankheit
spastic cerebral palsy | bilateral spasticity
spinal muscular atrophy | wasting palsy
can be used for arbitrary gender ("unisex", e.g. for clothes)
unbestimmtes Geschlecht
person attributes are modelled for SocialPerson: however, note SocialPerson=NaturalPerson so some attributes such as BodySize apply there to Physical quantitites; moreoever, later attributes regarding Impairment, Ability etc. will also be regarded as PersonAttribute