Title: Ontology for temporal reasoning based on extended Allen's interval algebra

Authors: Vagan Terziyan; Olena Kaikova

Addresses: Department of Mathematical Information Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland ' Department of Mathematical Information Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

Abstract: Aspects of time, change, evolution, temporal reasoning and decision-making remain in the focus of metadata and ontology engineering because many related challenges are yet to be fully addressed. In this paper, we present ontology ALLEN+ as a tool to reason with imperfect temporal information. We created a rule-set (SWRL on top of OWL) capable of temporal reasoning with partially incomplete and heterogeneous information. The ontology allows to have either quantitative, qualitative or hybrid information about temporal points and intervals, and the rules are capable of both ways transitions between different representations. We show how to use context of available imperfect temporal information to improve results of the composition operation of Allen's interval algebra, and we design rules for composition-in-context operation. We discover that additional context reduces the overall uncertainty of the composition and enables about 20% progress in overall quality of the composition and therefore in potential reasoning and decision-making.

Keywords: temporal reasoning; uncertainty; ontology; SWRL; imperfect information; interval algebra; decision making.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSO.2016.080348

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, 2016 Vol.11 No.2, pp.93 - 109

Received: 29 Mar 2016
Accepted: 30 Jul 2016
Published online: 16 Nov 2016 *

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