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The Information Flow Approach to Ontology-Based Semantic Alignment

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Theory and Applications of Ontology: Computer Applications

Abstract

In this article we argue for the lack of formal foundations for ontology-based semantic alignment. We analyse and formalise the basic notions of semantic matching and alignment and we situate them in the context of ontology-based alignment in open-ended and distributed environments, like the Web. We then use the mathematical notion of information flow in a distributed system to ground three hypotheses that enable semantic alignment. We draw our exemplar applications of this work from a variety of interoperability scenarios including ontology mapping, theory of semantic interoperability, progressive ontology alignment, and situated semantic alignment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These are commonly those of Identity, Weakening and Global Cut (see Definition 9).

  2. 2.

    Theories and theory interpretations as treated here can also be seen as particular cases of the more general framework provided by institution theory, which has been thoroughly studied in the field of algebraic software specification (see Goguen and Burstall, 1992).

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported under the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC), sponsored by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grant number GR/N15764/01; under Agreement Technologies CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 (CSD2007-00022) and MULOG2 (TIN2007-68005-C04-01) by Spain’s Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2009-SGR-1434).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ricoh Europe Plc, London, UK

    Yannis Kalfoglou

  2. Artifical Intelligence Research Institute (III A), CSIC,, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

    Marco Schorlemmer

Authors
  1. Yannis Kalfoglou
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  2. Marco Schorlemmer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yannis Kalfoglou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipto. Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Universita di Trento, Via Verdi 26, Trento, 38100, Italy

    Roberto Poli

  2. 23rd Place NE., 13544, Seattle, 98125-3325, Washington, USA

    Michael Healy

  3. Computer Technology Institute, Hellenic Open University &, N. Kazantzaki Str., Patras, 265 00, Greece

    Achilles Kameas

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Kalfoglou, Y., Schorlemmer, M. (2010). The Information Flow Approach to Ontology-Based Semantic Alignment. In: Poli, R., Healy, M., Kameas, A. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Computer Applications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8847-5_4

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