Stefano Borgo j Oliver Kutz j Frank Loebe j Fabian Neuhaus And for the JOWO Workshops
Editors
JOWO 2017|Episode III: The Tyrolean Autumn, was the third edition of the `Joint Ontology Workshops', which comprised a confederation of ten ontology workshops. It was hosted by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and held between September 21{23, 2017 in Bolzano, Italy.1 JOWO's mission is to provide a platform for the diverse communities interested in building, reasoning with, and applying formalised ontologies in the wide spectrum of Information Systems, Arti cial Intelligence, Philosophy, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, both in theory and applications.
The 2017 edition of JOWO collocated workshops that cover a broad spectrum of contemporary applied ontology research, including its philosophical and methodological foundations (FOUST II, DEW), the application of ontologies in particular domains (ODLS, FOMI), the role of ontology in related research areas like cognition (ISD3, EPINON), context (CREOL), data and knowledge (DAO, WINKS), shape and patterns (SHAPES 4.0).
CREOL International Workshop on Contextual Representation of Objects and
JOWO 2017 was a great success. There were about 100 submissions, 69 accepted papers, and the conference had more than 100 participants. Particularly memorable were the four keynotes by Antonio Chella, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Alessandro Mosca, and Todd Oakley, and the concert by the \Hyperinstruments Ensemble" lead by Nicola Baroni.
10See https://wiki.imise.uni-leipzig.de/Gruppen/OBML/Workshops/2017-ODLS 11See http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/workshops/SHAPES4/ 12See http://www.iiia.csic.es/winks/
JOWO 2017 Workshops
Dealing with context is a key factor in the conceptualisation of human experience, and thus a major issue for understanding natural language, and a challenging issue for AI. It is well known that some properties of objects and events may be activated according to the context of occurrence, thus determining access to partial salient information rather than to all information. One typical case involving objects is that of an orange being passed between two children, or the same orange peeled on a table: in the former case the roundness prevails over other traits, and the orange is likely being used to play; in the latter one, the edible features are those principally conveyed by the scene. Similar and higher plasticity associated to contextual features also characterises events. Events are complex entities by nature, and representing and extracting them from textual documents is not a trivial task. Existing lexical resources encode very basic information on events: their linguistic realisation, roles of participants, and types. Additional properties of events are currently missing: duration of events, event internal substructure, event pre- and post- situations, relations to other events in terms of explanatory/causal and temporal relations. These properties are essential to promote reasoning on events and their participants, and they may vary according to the speci c context of occurrence in a text/document. Contextual access to objects and events needs to be investigated at its interface with language. The design of ontological and linguistic resources that account for the mentioned semantic phenomena involves collecting contextual information and devising context-aware procedures. For its rst edition, CREOL has been organised as one of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO). The Proceedings of the rst edition collect three original papers: Natural Language Template Selection for Temporal Constraints by C. Maria Keet; PRiSMHA (Providing Rich Semantic Metadata for Historical Archives) by Anna Goy and colleagues; and Collecting Information for Action Understanding: The Enrichment of the IMAGACT Ontology of Action by Andrea Amelio Ravelli and colleagues.
The contributed works touch di erent aspects of the relationship between the representation of (abstract) concepts in ontologies and in language. Each paper focuses on di erent issues and all are centred around the main topics of the CREOL workshop: events and roles (the PRiSMHA project), actions and objects (the IMAGACT project), and the verbalisation of events and their time-related properties (the paper Natural Language Template Selection for Temporal Constraints).
The goal of the DAO workshop was to provide an opportunity for participants from academia and industry to present their latest developments in ontologymediated data integration and analysis techniques, and data-driven industrial applications. The accepted contributions, ve in total, presented applications of ontologies and related tools in elds like robotic journalism, civil engineering, policy monitoring, and 3D factory design. All submissions consisted of a demo description that was presented at the workshop. In the rst paper, Hermann Bense describes the textOmatic*Composer, a semantic technology that automatically generates personalised multi-language news streams from very large scale ontologies. As application examples, he demoed the Focus Online and Handelsblatt portals. In another paper, Valerio Santarelli, Giacomo Ronconi, Marco Ruzzi and Domenico Fabio Savo present OntoGUI, a Protege plugin that allows one to access heterogeneous data sources according to the ontology-based data access (OBDA) paradigm. Also related to OBDA, Alessandro Mosca presents an observatory portal of research and innovation of the Tuscany Region developed using ODBA technologies. Finally, Walter Terkaj demoed a GUI tool for the instantiation of OWL ontologies, and he showed, together with Giovanni Paolo Vigan, how the GUI can be used together with GIOVE-VF, an ontology-based virtual factory tool that supports the 3D design of factories.
Ontology engineering is a complex and error-prone task, which is, nonetheless, fundamental for many knowledge-intensive applications. To a large degree, successful ontology applications depend on an ability to detect, understand, and correct errors in ontologies and ontology-based knowledge bases. Success also depends on an ability to assess how well ontologies meet the requirements of a particular use. The main goal of the DEW workshop was to recall and advance the state of the art in ontology evaluation and debugging. Additionally, the workshop aimed to foster exchange on these topics between research-oriented and applicationoriented communities. The workshop welcomed submissions describing methods, tools, and challenges in ontology debugging and evaluation, as well as quality criteria, metrics, experimental results, and lessons learned. Submissions ranged in emphasis, focusing to varying degrees on experience, pragmatics, and theory. Perspectives included those of ontology (re)users, ontology developers, and those responsible for quality assurance of ontologies incorporated into larger systems. The workshop accepted a total of four submissions, covering di erent perspectives on ontology evaluation and debugging. Ricardo Guimar~aes and Renata Wassermann present preliminary work on the combination of atomic decompositions|a technique developed in the area of ontology modularisation|and the theory of local change, through the de nition of a new relevance metric. Jean-Remi Bourguet, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Alessander Botti Benevides, and Veruska Zamborlini describe three di erent approaches for representing changes in the standard web ontology language OWL 2, and compare them through an empirical analysis based on synthetic, but principled, random instances. In their submission, Claudia Schon and Ste en Staab studied the problem of instance-level updates of dynamic knowledge bases, taking into account the terminological knowledge, through a new notion of query-driven semantics. Finally, He Tan, Anders Adlemo, Vladimir Tarasov, and Mats Johansson present an evaluation for a real-life ontology from the avionics domain. The event was successful, promoting deep and interesting discussions that permeated beyond the workshop sessions.
Formal ontologies and knowledge representation mainly focus on characterising how a given domain is structured, i.e., they identify a set of concepts, entities, and relations together with the constraints that hold for this domain. The structure of the characterisation is usually intended to re ect the point of view of signi cant experts or a realist view of how things about a particular domain are in reality. The aim of this workshop is to explore an epistemological stance in formal ontology and knowledge representation and focus on the assessment of the modelling provided by the ontology designer. In particular, we are interested in fostering two intertwined research directions. Firstly, we are interested in promoting discussions about the epistemological foundations of formal ontologies and of knowledge representation. A number of timely important problems are related to this point, for instance: the investigations of cognitively adequate ontological representations, the investigations on the provenance of data, the problem of the reliability of the source of information (both human and arti cial, e.g. sensors), the problem of the epistemic reliability of the classi cation provided by ontology users, the problem of nding epistemically and cognitively well-founded rationales for the integration of ontological representations with other representational formats (e.g. deep neural networks, vector space models etc.).
Secondly, we are interested in formal and ontological approaches to the de nitions of the concepts that are relevant to the assessment of the perspective of the ontology designer. Problems related to this direction include: ontology of general epistemological concepts (e.g. proof, argument, explanation, epistemic reliability, trust), ontology of cognitive concepts (perception, reasoning, sensations), ontology of data and measurements.
We aim to address to an interdisciplinary audience, by inviting scholars in philosophy, computer science, logic, conceptual modelling, knowledge representation, and cognitive science to contribute to the discussion.
The workshop proposed four contributions that approach the relationship between ontology and epistemology from heterogeneous interesting perspectives. Stanislaw Ambroszkiewicz discussed an intuitionistic foundation of the real numbers. Erden Miray Yazgan Yalkin presented a discussion of the concept of truth in the Buddhist tradition. Roberta Ferrario articulated a socio-material stance in developing formal ontologies. Giovanni Buonocore discussed the ontological status of relations in connection to philosophy of physics.
FOMI is an international forum where academic researchers and industrial practitioners meet to analyse and discuss application issues related to methods, theories, tools and applications based on formal ontologies. There is today wide agreement that knowledge modelling and the semantic dimension of information play an increasingly central role in networked economy: semantic-based applications aim to provide a framework for information and knowledge sharing, reliable information exchange, meaning negotiation and coordination between distinct organisations or among members of the same organisation. Theoretical ideas seem often very promising, but their actual implementation brings up unexpected problems and issues. The FOMI 2017 Workshop aimed at collecting useful experiences and lessons learned covering the following areas: 1. Problems encountered in ontology-based applications; 2. New insights on known problematic issues; 3. Success stories of ontology implementations in industry; 4. Best practices on the application of ontological methodologies to real-world situations.
The accepted contributions at FOMI 2017, eight in total, address practical modelling concerns arising out of the application of computational ontologies in elds like civil engineering, nance, business process modelling and manufacturing. The two papers presented by Adamo et al. address the current limits of languages for process knowledge representation like BPMN and UML-AD and propose how to overcome these limits from an ontology-based perspective. Aameri and Grueninger introduce an initial set of modular ontologies for manufacturing applications and sketch an axiomatised ontology to represent geometric and topological constraints. Terkaj and Pauwels present an algorithm to automate the modularisation of ifcOWL, that is, the OWL version of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), a well-established standardised data model in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) area. The purpose is to facilitate the exploitation of Semantic Web technologies for the Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC) and Facility Management (FM) industries. Together with Schneider, Terkaj and Pauwels also present the Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) ontology for the integrated representation of cyber-physical systems embedding building elements, sensors, actuators and devices. In the nancial industry, Blums and Weigand present the Core Ontology of Financial Reporting Information Systems for a Shared Ledger Environment (COFRIS) for facilitating the reuse, transparency and sharing of nancial reporting. In the same direction, the short paper of Browne et al. presents the implementation of an extended version of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO), which is called Global Fund Reporting Ontology (GFRO), to build semantic-based nancial reporting compliant with current standards. Finally, the work presented by Detoni et al. provides a methodology to support ontology development by eliciting experts knowledge and know-how in conceptual models that are codi ed in the ARIS language. The approach is validated by a case study in the public security of Brazil.
Foundational ontology is about categories of reality or thought which are common to all or almost all subject-matters. Commonly considered examples of such categories include `object', `quality', `function', `role', `process', `event', `time', and `place'. There are several foundational ontologies that provide a systematic formal representation of these categories, their relationships, and interdependencies. Amongst existing foundational ontologies, there is both a substantial measure of agreement and some dramatic disagreements. There is currently no uniform consensus concerning how a foundational ontology should be organised, how far its `reach' should be (e.g., is the distinction between physical and non-physical entities su ciently fundamental to be included here?), and even what role it should play in relation to more specialised domain ontologies.
The main use of foundational ontologies is as a starting point for the development of domain ontologies and application ontologies. The foundational ontology provides an ontology engineer with a conceptual framework that enables her to analyse a given domain, identify the entities in the domain as specialisations of the generic categories in the foundational ontology, and often reuse relationships (e.g., parthood) from the foundational ontology. The utilisation of foundational ontologies for the development of domain and application ontologies has two main bene ts. Firstly, the ontology engineer can reuse an existing set of well-studied ontological distinctions and design principles instead of having to develop an ad-hoc solution. Secondly, if two domain ontologies are based on the same foundational ontology, it is easier to integrate them.
FOUST is an ontology workshop series that o ers researchers in foundational ontology an opportunity to present their results. This includes work on speci c areas of foundational ontology as well as work on particular foundational ontologies. Amongst speci c areas, one which continues to excite a good deal of discussion on account of its fundamental nature is mereology, which is concerned with the analysis and formalisation of the part-whole relation. Several of the papers in this workshop address various di erent aspects of this topic. Keet, for example, draws attention to the plethora of di erent forms of part-whole relations that have been enumerated in the literature (including, for example, spatial parthood, membership of a collection, material constitution, and participation in a process ), and explores how the properties of these relations are re ected in the speci c formalisations adopted by di erent foundational ontologies. Ru and Gruninger are similarly concerned with handling multiple part-whole relations, but here in the context of solid physical objects, for which they distinguish components, pieces, portions, and contained entities, each of which they propose should be handled by a separate module within a collection of ontologies of solid physical objects. Barton, Jansen and Ethier discuss a completely di erent aspect of mereology, focussing on classifying the parthood relations that exist amongst dispositions | for example `a disposition to break is part of fragility' vs `the solubility of part of a tablet is part of the solubility of the whole tablet'. Finally Mizoguchi and Borgo study the notion of functional parthood, for which they propose an analysis in terms of another fundamental ontological category, roles.
Several papers in the workshop presented some current developments in existing foundational ontologies. Porello and Guizzardi propose a rst-order modal axiomatisation of the Uni ed Foundational Ontology (UFO). Benevides, Bourguet, Guizzardi and Pen~aloza also work with UFO, speci cally the part (UFO-B) dealing with the ontology of events, which they show can be formalised within the Description Logic SROIQ, thus enabling practical application of the theory using OWL 2 DL. Mizoguchi and Toyoshima present YAMATO, Yet Another More Advanced Top-level Ontology, with special attention to how it can handle examples involving change over time. Chui and Gruninger turn their attention to DOLCE, and in particular the problem of verifying it in the sense of ensuring that the models of the formal theory conform to the intended models of the ontology. The method they propose is modular, involving separate veri cation of an exhaustive set of subtheories of DOLCE.
The remaining papers cover a diverse set of concerns relating to foundational ontologies. Gruninger, Chui and Katsumi propose a view of upper ontologies as composed of a set of generic ontologies each concerned with the axiomatisation of a particular well-de ned set of generic concepts. As in the paper of Chui and Gruninger, this leads to the possibility of a modular approach to ontology veri cation, using in this case the principles enshrined in the Common Logic Ontology Repository (COLORE). Bennett, Hasse and Gilmore discuss a way of handling contextually-de ned concepts such as `customer' (de ned in the context of some commercial business), using a partition of the upper ontology to clarify the relations between the three broad top-level categories of `independent', `relative', and `mediating' things. Garbacz discusses a di erent set of issues, relating to the classi cation of objects on the basis of their `qualitative stability', that is, the extent to which they are liable to undergo change with respect to their qualities. Schulz, Boeker, Vera Ramos and Jansen address the matter of ontological education, taking a close look at two long-established and widely used pedagogical ontologies, the PIZZA and WINE ontologies, to determine to what extent they remain t for purpose in the light of more recent developments, proposing suitable modi cations where they are found to be de cient. Finally Neuhaus presents a critique of a widely cited de nition of `ontology'.
Inspired by the concept of an embodied mind, in which all cognition is thought to manifest as direct consequences to the body's sensorimotor experiences, is the theory of image schemas. Image schemas are thought to be mental generalisations from repeated exposure to particular spatiotemporal relationships and capture concepts such as Containment, Support, Source-Path-Goal and Attraction. The theory was introduced in cognitive linguistics as a means to explain the large degree of spatial language found in language concerning abstract concepts as well as metaphors. In developmental psychology, image schemas are investigated as part of conceptual learning processes where they are thought to function as information skeletons for analogical reasoning and concept learning. In design and in more artistic domains, image schemas are used to describe the experience by which humans perceive information, for instance, how musical scales often are visualised as movement along a vertical axis. As of late, research in computer science has taken a liking to image schemas as they provide a straightforward way to approach the symbol grounding problem. Therefore, methods in both machine learning and traditional knowledge representation have been employed to simulate image schemas. Here, their integration into formal frameworks for concept invention and analogy engines, as well as how they can aid natural language processing and understanding are some of the areas that could bene t from the integration of the information-rich image schemas.
As image schemas are studied from a wide range of scienti c disciplines, one of the major issues for the research eld is the prevalence of inconsistent views, definitions and research terminology. Therefore, one of the main purposes of ISD3 is to provide a meeting point for researchers on image schemas, regardless of scienti c background, where ideas, methods and results can be discussed, in order to build bridges and to provide support from di erent directions. In this light, the workshop has three accepted papers from di erent elds of research. Shingo Imai approaches image schemas from a multi-linguistic perspective in his paper \Schema Con ict: Functional Schema and Con gurational Schema". Jamie MacBeth, Dagmar Gromann and Maria M. Hedblom look at the relationship between the theory of image schemas and Conceptual Dependency Primitives, a classic theory in natural language processing in \Image Schemas and Conceptual Dependency Primitives: A Comparison". Finally, Cli O'Reilly and Randy Harris take a more mathematical approach by demonstrating how some of the image schemas can be approached as vector space models in \Antimetabole and Image Schemata { Ontological and Vector Space Models".
Medicine, biology and life sciences produce hardly manageable and often
incomprehensible amounts of data, information, and knowledge. Their computer-based
retrieval, processing, integration, as well as their conceptual foundation,
application, and reuse present ever new challenges to existing methods of knowledge
representation, data bases, and data analysis and retrieval. The workshops on
Ontologies and Data in Life Sciences (ODLS) cover the overall spectrum of
biomedical information management, ranging from experimental data acquisition and
preprocessing across analysis, structuring and interpretation of data, up to
developing structured representations of knowledge, in particular in the form of
ontologies, with their various applications. The primary aim of ODLS is an
interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, fostering collaboration between ontologists, computer
scientists, bio-informaticians, medical information scientists, physicians,
biometricians, bio-chemists and philosophers, in academia and industry.
Works accepted for ODLS 2017 are distinguished into papers (of 6-12 pages) and
extended abstracts (of 2-5 pages). The proceedings comprise ve papers and seven
extended abstracts. Topicwise, the majority of the submissions present a domain
ontology embedded in its speci c application context. Six such works cover a
broad spectrum of domains. (
A second cluster, one with four submissions, focuses even more on ontology-based
applications and less on speci c ontologies. (
The remaining two works relate to natural language processing, where (11) Schulz et al. report on experimental ndings regarding the ambiguity of terms in SNOMED-CT, while (12) Kasac et al. sketch the ontological foundations of their development of an annotation schema for mentions of drugs in clinical narratives, currently focusing on discharge letters.
This overall set of contributions in combination with the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO) keynotes and supporting program has led to a prosperous and inspiring workshop event in 2017, which was the eighth in a series of workshops that started in 2009 under the title Ontologies in Biomedicine and Life Sciences (OBML)13. Since then a work group named OBML14 has been established in the context of the Special Interest Group Informatics and Life Sciences 15, which is itself a shared, interdisciplinary group associated with the German Informatics Society (GI)16 and the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry 13See https://wiki.imise.uni-leipzig.de/Gruppen/OBML/Workshops/ 14See https://wiki.imise.uni-leipzig.de/Gruppen/OBML/ 15See http://fb-ilw.gi.de/ 16See https://gi.de/ and Epidemiology (GMDS)17. Moreover, since the third edition OBML/ODLS workshops have been acknowledged as Supported Events by the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA)18.
The OBML group runs ODLS workshops annually in Central Europe, striving for international participation also beyond that region. Becoming a part of IAOA's Joint Ontology Workshops in 2017 has yielded a distinguished ODLS edition and fruitful interactions with other communities, very well in line with the interdisciplinary spirit of ODLS. Shape, Form, and Structure are some of the most elusive notions and are pervasive in diverse disciplines from humanities (like literature studies, art history) to sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) and within these from the formal (mathematics, logic) to the empirical disciplines (engineering, cognitive science, architecture, environmental planning, design). Within domains such as computer science and arti cial intelligence research, these notions are understood by mixing their common-sense meanings (e.g. to make sense of everyday perception and communication) and ad hoc technical speci cations. Even in the di erent declinations of design the conception and sense of these notions change considerably. Several approaches have been proposed within the aforementioned disciplines to study the very notions of shape, form and structure from di erent viewpoints, yet a comprehensive treatment of these notions is lacking and no interdisciplinary perspective has emerged.
In these years, due to the popularity of the multi-agent approaches, the explosion of research and application in robotics, the cyber-physical and Internet of Things views, as well as social turns in geography and cultural heritage, there is a rising interest in interaction and its forms. The understanding of the term interaction is challenging due to the di erent types of entities it might involve and to the many contexts where it may occur. Conceived quantitatively or qualitatively, interaction can be located among agents and systems, among societies and cultures, among languages and stimuli, among views and interpretations. It puts an emphasis on such diverse aspects like emergence on the one hand and repetition on the other. Furthermore, it suggests a conception of form which is intrinsically dynamic, linked with temporality and, of course, action. This time-based notion of shape/form/structure demands not only an analysis of spatial con gurations, but of spatio-temporal occurrences. As interactions of colours make clear (e.g. see the studies of Josef Albers), these occurrences may not always be literal sequences, they can happen simultaneously, but there must be time and space for something to take place. From here, we can start asking: Which shapes do patterns of interaction have? Are patterns themselves static or dynamic? What does that mean? Are these meta-level shapes easier to formulate or formalise? Which patterns of (social) interaction are desirable? How to use them for play, planning, storytelling, collaboration and other creative purposes? 17See https://gmds.de/index.php?id=228 18See http://iaoa.org/ This edition of Shapes 4.0 covers several topics. The paper \The Interplay between Shape and Feature Representation" by San lippo et al. discusses modelling constructs for shape representation, from low-level geometric elements to general entities like protrusions and holes. The paper considers di erent modelling options from both the ontological and practical perspectives and provides some representation patterns. The paper by Cantale et al. \The Shape of a Benedictine Monastery: The SaintGall Ontology" presents an OWL 2 theory that formalises the layout of the Saint Gall monastery plan. With this work, the authors give the possibility to compare this ideal Benedictine monastery with its di erent realisation and reinterpretations around Europe across the centuries. The paper \Show, Don't Tell: Retrieving Cultural Assets Via Gestures" by Helmer et al. faces the limitations of textual representation in the case of intangible assets. They focus on the domain of (hand-held) tools aiming to record the gestures and a richer context than what is available in today's standard approaches. Maria M. Hedblom with the paper \Beneath the Paint: A Visual Journey through Conceptual Metaphor Violation" introduces us to the use of metaphors in artworks and on how these drive the interaction between an art piece and the observer. The discussion moves around a concrete painting from the author that is conceptualised via two metaphoric structures: `UP is GOOD' and `DARK is BAD'. The paper \Towards an Understanding of Place Forms through the Lens of Social Practice Theories" by A. Cala ore and G. Boella focuses on the meaning and role of patterns in the urban environment discussing the identi cation of place forms as the result of an interaction between the spatial and the social systems. S. Fiorini and M. Abel, with their contribution \Quality Patterns and Conceptual Spaces", discuss the understanding of qualities in ontological terms by linking Guarino's notion of quality elds/patterns and a special approach, called Holistic-Structure Spaces, within the Conceptual Spaces general framework. \The Shape of the Other", by Rafael Pen~aloza, is a poem on shapes, people and their being `others'. Klaus Gasteier, with his paper \Shaping a Structural and Visual Representation of Strategic Interaction", takes us into the notion of strategic interaction as the relation between concealed and exposed actions. This work sheds some light on the understanding and representation of con ict situations, including risks and potentials, via a new logographic sign language.
Sharing knowledge becomes increasingly important in the age of information and a growing number of gradually expanding, distributed systems heighten the need for a dynamic interactive sharing process. Interaction is understood here as any kind of communication between human and/or arti cial agents. Knowledge can be learned, extracted, produced or elicited by a wide range of automated systems. These systems span across various disciplines and application scenarios ranging from Big Data to the Internet of Things. The increasing number and heterogeneity of knowledge sources has rendered knowledge sharing proportionally more complex. With new technologies, new knowledge sources keep on appearing and a centralised sharing process becomes more and more unrealistic. Interaction-based knowledge sharing requires particular attention, both for its ambitious scope and for the fundamental issues that it raises. Indeed, the interactive property grants this type of knowledge sharing the same advantages as other dynamic systems. First, distributed sources can bring together their knowledge without giving precedence to one source. Second, it allows for integration from which new knowledge can emerge. Finally, interaction permits feedback during the sharing process, helping systems to control both the process and the success of the integration. However, the approach also shares the challenges of other dynamic systems: heterogeneity in vocabularies and methodologies between sources requires adaptability. Furthermore, new emergent knowledge necessitates the handling of novelty and unpredictable results. Finally, humans are a source of knowledge that arti cial agents still have di culties to decipher, especially when they are using natural language.
In this rst edition the topics covered in the workshop addressed several of the above challenges. The paper \Vocabulary Alignment for Agents with Flexible Protocols" by Paula Chocron and Marco Schorlemmer proposes a task-based approach to overcoming vocabulary heterogeneity by enabling agents to learn alignments based on shared procedural knowledge. The used protocols are exible in the sense that they allow to consider di erences in the speci cations of agents by assigning weights and penalties. The work of Kemo Adrian and Enric Plaza o ers \An Approach to Interaction-Based Concept Convergence in Multi-Agent Systems" which addresses vocabulary heterogeneity from an argumentation-based perspective. The paper proposes a new formalism to allow agents to argue the meaning of their concepts with the objective to reach an agreement by means of concept convergence. Luc a Gomez Alvarez, Brandon Bennett and Adam RichardBollans address the issue of ambiguity from the perspective of conceptual vagueness in their work entitled \Talking about Forests: An Example of Sharing Information Expressed with Vague Terms". The paper presents a framework for the representation of semantic variability as all admissible precise interpretations of a vague concept, which is illustrated with the example of `forest'. Finally, Jamie C. Macbeth presented \Conceptual Primitive Decomposition for Knowledge Sharing via Natural Language", an approach that focuses on the grounding of linguistic expressions in primitive decomposition methods building on embodied human cognition. This representation system allows for an e ective knowledge-sharing between ambiguous natural language expressions and more rigorous knowledge structures.
We would like to thank the program committee members and the additional reviewers for their timely reviewing. We thank our invited keynote speakers|Todd Oakley, Antonio Chella, Alessandro Mosca, and Giancarlo Guizzardi|for their support and contributions. We would moreover like to thank the International Association for Ontology and its Applications, see http://iaoa.org, for providing funding for student grants and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and its event management team for providing generous nancial support and facilities.
JOWO 2017 was a supported event of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) and was jointly organised by the IAOA and the Research Centre on Knowledge and Data (KRDB) at unibz.
KRDB 3
Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy University of Leipzig, Germany Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany Valerio Basile Tommaso Caselli Daniele P. Radicioni University of Mannheim, Germany University of Bremen, Germany VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands Universite de Nice Sophia Antipolis, France Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart, Germany STLab, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy University of Turin, Italy University of Turin, Italy Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), USA VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands University of Mannheim, Germany Bosch Research and Technology Center, Pittsburgh, USA University of Florence, Italy Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy University of Turin, Italy Universita degli Studi di Udine, Italy Saarland University, Germany University of Cambridge, UK Roberto Confalonieri Andrea Janes Diego Calvanese
Programme Chairs Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy City, University of London, UK Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy SIRIS Academic, Barcelona, Spain Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Rafael Pen~aloza Amanda Vizedom Securboration, USA Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy University of Toronto, Canada Ulm University, Germany University of Oviedo, Spain Nuance Communications, USA Wikimedia Germany, Germany Politecnica de Madrid, Spain University of Manchester, UK University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA University of S~ao Paulo, Brazil Daniele Porello Claudio Masolo Antonio Lieto John Bateman Francesco Berto Tarek Richard Besold Massimiliano Carrara Fabrice Correia Roberta Ferrario Marcello Frixione Alessandro Giordani Davide Grossi Giancarlo Guizzardi Maria M. Hedblom Heinrich Herre Gilles Kassel Adila Alfa Krisnadhi Emiliano Lorini Kevin Mulligan Alessandro Oltramari Rafael Pen~aloza Simon Scheider Nicolas Troquard Tuomas Tahko Laure Vieu Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy University of Turin, Italy University of Bremen, Germany University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands City, University of London, UK University of Padua, Italy University of Neuch^atel, Switzerland Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy University of Genoa, Italy Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy University of Liverpool, UK Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany University of Leipzig, Germany Universite de Picardie - Jules Vernes, France University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT-CNRS), France University of Geneva, Switzerland Bosch Research and Technology Center, Pittsburgh, USA Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Utrecht University, The Netherlands Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy University of Helsinki, Finland Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT-CNRS), France Emilio M. San lippo Laura Daniele Giorgio Colombo Bob Young Aleksandra Sojic Zahid Usman Walter Terkaj Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scienti c Research (TNO), The Netherlands Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy Loughborough University, UK Institute of Biomedical Technologies (ITB-CNR), Milan, Italy Coventry University, UK Institute of Industrial Technologies and Automation (ITIA-CNR), Bari, Italy Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy University of Toronto, Canada Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain University Jaume I, Spain University of Trento, Italy Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences (DTL), The Netherlands Antony Galton Fabian Neuhaus Stefano Borgo Maureen Donnelly Roberta Ferrario Pierre Grenon Michael Gruninger Nicola Guarino Oliver Kutz Frank Loebe Riichiro Mizoguchi Barry Smith Laure Vieu University of Exeter, UK Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy SUNY Bu alo, USA Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy University College London, UK University of Toronto, Canada Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy University of Leipzig, Germany Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan SUNY Bu alo, USA Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT-CNRS), France Maria M. Hedblom Mihailo Antovic Oliver Kutz Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany University of Nis, Serbia Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy University of Bremen, Germany University of Leeds, UK Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Zurich University of Applied Sciences at Winterthur, Switzerland University of Exeter, UK University of Erfurt, Germany Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany University of Navarra, Spain Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Bellaterra, Spain Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA University College Dublin, Ireland University of Chicago, USA Martin Boeker Heinrich Herre Ludger Jansen Frank Loebe Daniel Schober University of Freiburg, Germany University of Leipzig, Germany University of Rostock and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany University of Leipzig, Germany Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB), Halle (Saale), Germany Sherbrooke University, Canada University of Freiburg, Germany Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy University of Murcia, Spain Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil University of Birmingham, UK University of Leipzig, Germany University of Leipzig, Germany University of Florida, USA King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia University of Rostock and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany University of Cape Town, South Africa University of Leipzig, Germany University of Leipzig, Germany Newcastle University, UK HITS gGmbH, Heidelberg, Germany Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Berlin, Germany University of Paderborn, Germany Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Galway, Ireland Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB), Halle (Saale), Germany Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Medical University Graz, Austria Institute of Biomedical Technologies (ITB-CNR), Milan, Italy Saarland University Medical Center, Germany Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands University of Rostock, Germany Rossella Stufano Inge Hinterwaldner Stefano Borgo Kris Krois Oliver Kutz Mara Abel Mihailo Antovic Tarek Besold Dino Borri Domenico Camarda Emilios Cambouropoulos Klaus Gasteier Chiara Ghidini Franca Giannini Giancarlo Guizzardi Inge Hinterwaldner Kris Krois Oliver Kutz Frieder Nake Omar Nasim Paulo E. Santos Angelika Seppi Rossella Stufano Politecnico di Bari, Italy Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil University of Nis, Serbia University of Bremen, Germany Politecnico di Bari, Italy Politecnico di Bari, Italy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Universitat der Kunste Berlin, Germany Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, Italy Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies (IMATI-CNR), Rome, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy University of Bremen, Germany University of Regensburg, Germany Centro Universitario FEI, Brazil Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Politecnico di Bari, Italy Kemo Adrian Jero^me Euzenat Dagmar Gromann Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain INRIA & University Grenoble Alpes, France Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain University of Leeds, UK Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain DFKI, Saarbrucken, Germany Jonkoping University, Sweden Fair eld University, USA Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, UK University of Leipzig and University of Paderborn, Germany Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain University of Edinburgh, UK Tufts University, Medford, USA Arti cial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain Informatica Trentina, Trento, Italy Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., Tokyo, Japan ILLC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands