A semantic approach to mapping the Provenance Ontology to Basic Formal Ontology

TL;DR

This paper presents a semantic mapping methodology to align the Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), enhancing interoperability and semantic consistency across diverse data and ontologies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel semantic mapping approach and alignment criteria between PROV-O and BFO, evaluated for logical consistency using semantic web technologies.

Findings

Alignments are logically consistent with PROV-O instances

Semantic web technologies support FAIR principles

Mapping improves interoperability between ontologies

Abstract

The Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended ontology used to structure data about provenance across a wide variety of domains. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology ISO/IEC standard used to structure a wide variety of ontologies, such as the OBO Foundry ontologies and the Common Core Ontologies (CCO). To enhance interoperability between these two ontologies, their extensions, and data organized by them, a mapping methodology and set of alignments are presented according to specific criteria which prioritize semantic and logical principles. The ontology alignments are evaluated by checking their logical consistency with canonical examples of PROV-O instances and querying terms that do not satisfy the alignment criteria as formalized in SPARQL. A variety of semantic web technologies are used in support of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.