An ontological approach to the construction of problem-solving models

TL;DR

This paper introduces OntoKADS, an ontological framework for constructing expertise models in problem-solving, emphasizing a core ontology with roles that bridge domain knowledge and reasoning.

Contribution

It presents a novel ontological approach for building expertise models, focusing on roles as primitives and defining new rules for model construction.

Findings

A coherent framework for roles in problem-solving ontologies

New rules for constructing expertise models

Enhanced understanding of the role primitive in ontologies

Abstract

Our ongoing work aims at defining an ontology-centered approach for building expertise models for the CommonKADS methodology. This approach (which we have named "OntoKADS") is founded on a core problem-solving ontology which distinguishes between two conceptualization levels: at an object level, a set of concepts enable us to define classes of problem-solving situations, and at a meta level, a set of meta-concepts represent modeling primitives. In this article, our presentation of OntoKADS will focus on the core ontology and, in particular, on roles - the primitive situated at the interface between domain knowledge and reasoning, and whose ontological status is still much debated. We first propose a coherent, global, ontological framework which enables us to account for this primitive. We then show how this novel characterization of the primitive allows definition of new rules for the construction of expertise models.