Application of a methodological approach to compare ontologies

This study aims to the OQuaRE quality model to the developed methodology.

Ontologies are formal, well-defined and flexible representations of knowledge related to a specific domain. They provide the base to develop efficient and interoperable solutions. Hence, a proliferation of ontologies in many domains is unleashed. Then, it is necessary to define how to compare such ontologies to decide which one is the most suitable for the specific needs of users/developers. As the emerging development of ontologies, several studies have proposed criteria to evaluate them.

In a previous study, the authors propose a methodological process to qualitatively and quantitatively compare ontologies at Lexical, Structural and Domain Knowledge levels, considering correctness and quality perspectives. As the evaluation methods of the proposal are based on a golden-standard, it can be customized to compare ontologies in any domain.

To show the suitability of the proposal, the authors apply the methodological approach to conduct comparative studies of ontologies in two different domains, one in the robotic area, in particular for the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem; and the other one, in the cultural heritage domain. With these cases of study, the authors demonstrate that with this methodological comparative process, we are able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of ontologies, as well as the gaps still needed to fill in the target domains.

Using these metrics and the quality model from OQuaRE, the authors are incorporating a standard of software engineering at the quality validation into the Semantic Web.