Region-Based Merging of Open-Domain Terminological Knowledge

TL;DR

This paper presents a new method for merging open-domain terminological knowledge using Region Connection Calculus (RCC5), enabling principled handling of conflicting information through topological region representations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that translates terminological knowledge into region spaces with RCC5, facilitating effective merging and conflict resolution.

Findings

Successfully merges conflicting terminological sources

Preserves expressivity of original knowledge representations

Provides a formal framework for conflict-aware knowledge integration

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel method for merging open-domain terminological knowledge. It takes advantage of the Region Connection Calculus (RCC5), a formalism used to represent regions in a topological space and to reason about their set-theoretic relationships. To this end, we first propose a faithful translation of terminological knowledge provided by several and potentially conflicting sources into region spaces. The merging is then performed on these spaces, and the result is translated back into the underlying language of the input sources. Our approach allows us to benefit from the expressivity and the flexibility of RCC5 while dealing with conflicting knowledge in a principled way.