=Paper= {{Paper |id=Vol-2518/paper-CREOL2 |storemode=property |title=Towards a Pattern-Based Core Model of Events in the Legal Domain |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2518/paper-CREOL2.pdf |volume=Vol-2518 |authors=Mirna El Ghosh,Habib Abdulrab |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/jowo/GhoshA19 }} ==Towards a Pattern-Based Core Model of Events in the Legal Domain== https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2518/paper-CREOL2.pdf
    Towards a Pattern-Based Core Model of
         Events in the Legal Domain
                        Mirna EL GHOSHa,1 and Habib ABDULRABa
                              a
                                LITIS, INSA De Rouen, France



            Abstract. Representing events in conceptual models is increasingly gaining
            widespread attention. In this paper, a core model of events in the legal domain is
            proposed. For building the model, a pattern-based approach is applied by deriving
            and combining ontology patterns from the foundational ontology of events UFO-B
            and the legal core ontology UFO-L. We relied as well in this model on the novel
            understanding of events as emergent from “scenes”. The aim of the core model of
            events is to provide a comprehensive support to represent a variety of complex
            aspects of events in the legal domain. The targeted model, that is composed of
            different modules (ontologies), can be extended by domain ontologies. The use of
            this model is demonstrated in the domain of carriage of goods by sea aiming to build
            a well-founded legal domain ontology for the traceability of goods.

            Keywords. Ontology of legal events, UFO-B, UFO-L, pattern-based model,
            conceptual ontology patterns



1. Introduction

Events are considered as central aspects for many domains such as law, medicine,
logistics, etc. In research, an explicit modeling of events is increasingly gaining
widespread attention [1] and a mandatory modeling requirement is to represent events in
(structural) conceptual models [2]. In the ontology engineering domain, representing
events using conceptual modeling process is an interesting and challenging task specially
that conceptual models should provide conceptual clarification and explicit
characterization for them [3]. Actually, events, as behavioral elements, are notions
comprising complex worldviews involving a variety of aspects among others the
participation of agents and objects in events, as well as the mereological, causal and
temporal relations between events. Therefore, in order to represent them in conceptual
models, there is a need to investigate the ontological notion of events and their relations
with endurants (objects) [4].
     The concept event, in its general sense, is considered as synonym of perdurant or
occurent. Meanwhile, a novel understanding of this concept, as emergent from scene, has
raised recently [5, 6]. In the literature, different foundational and upper-level ontologies
have presented the notion of event as perdurant such as BWW [7], Kaneiwa et al. [8]
and UFO-B [4]. Foundational ontologies define a range of top-level domain-independent
ontological categories which form a general foundation for more elaborated domain-

   1
     Corresponding Author. Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
specific ontologies [9, 10]. For representing events in the legal domain, there is a need
for a legal core ontology, such as UFO-L [23] and LKIF-Core [24], that provide a precise
definition of the structural knowledge in this field that spans across different domain
applications (e.g. penal law, maritime law, etc.). In this context, reusing foundational
and core ontologies to support the development of lower level ontologies is recognized
as a promising approach in the ontology engineering domain since it enables a speeding
up of the ontology development process [11]. Meanwhile, it is considered as a hard
research issue and one of the most challenging and neglected areas of ontology
engineering [12]. The problems of selecting the right ontologies to reuse, extending them
and composing several fragments have not been properly addressed yet [13].
     Ontology patterns (OPs) are recognized as a promising approach to solve recurrent
ontology development problems. OPs are modeling solutions that favor reuse of encoded
experiences and good practices [14]. In the ontology engineering community, OPs have
been addressed mainly in the works of [12,13,14, 15]. Recently, this approach has gained
more attention specially in [11,16,17] where its main goal is to support the building of
more consistent ontologies in a reuse-centered process. There are many different types
of OPs that can be used in different phases of the ontology engineering process [11]. In
this work, we are interested in Conceptual Ontology Patterns (COPs), since the focus is
on building a conceptual model of legal events.
     The main goal of this paper is to build a core model of events in the legal domain
modularized in different ontology modules and can be extended by domain ontologies.
This model is developed by applying a pattern-oriented approach that derives ontology
patterns from the foundational ontology of events UFO-B [4] and the legal core ontology
UFO-L [23]. In addition, in this model, the strict sense of events as emergent from scenes
is adapted [6]. The core model of events is demonstrated in the domain of carriage of
goods aiming to develop a well-founded legal domain ontology for the traceability of
goods. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 discusses the
ontological notion of events. In section 3, the main requirements for events modeling in
the legal domain are addressed. Section 4 describes the derivation of ontology patterns
from the foundational ontology UFO-B and the legal core ontology UFO-L. In section
5, an application of the model of events in the domain of carriage of goods is
demonstrated. Section 6 outlines the related works. Finally, the paper is concluded in
section 7.


2. The Ontological Notion of Events

Generally, events are known as perdurants that unfold over time. Several foundational
and upper-level ontologies present them as perduring entities. Meanwhile, a novel
understanding of events is proposed recently to consider two broad categories in
perdurants: events and scenes. Therefore, events are considered as emergent of scenes.
In the following, these notions and the main theories of events will be discussed.

2.1. Events as Perdurants

In the philosophic literature, the term ‘event’ is considered, in its most general sense, as
synonym of perdurant or occurent [6]. Events are defined as “perduring entities that
unfold over time i.e. they take up time” [1]. This aspect is largely adapted in the ontology
engineering domain where a variety of foundational and upper-level ontologies have
presented the notion of events as perdurants such as UFO [4], BWW [7], and Kaneiwa
et al. [8].
     UFO is a philosophically and cognitively well-founded foundational ontology [18].
It makes a fundamental distinction between three kinds of individuals: substance
(endurants), tropes and events (perdurants) [19]. Endurants are entities that are wholly
present whenever they are present i.e. they don’t have temporal parts [3]. Meanwhile,
events are individuals composed of temporal parts and are existentially dependent on
endurants. They happen in time in the sense that they extend in time accumulating
temporal parts [4]. Trope individuals can only exist in other individuals, i.e., they are
existentially dependent on other individuals [19]. Examples of endurants are a house, a
person or the moon. Examples of perdurants are a football game, a birthday party or a
business process. Examples of trope individuals are the enrollment of students, the
redness of a T-shirt, or the belief in God. Therefore, two main layers of UFO are
distinguished: the layer A that consists of the ontology of substance and tropes
individuals (UFO-A), the layer B that consists of the ontology of events (UFO-B). This
study is concerned mainly in the ontology of events UFO-B that supports a variety of
aspects of events.
    •    Event mereology (part-whole relationship): events are analyzed as entities with
         certain mereological structures. They can be atomic or complex. Atomic events
         have no proper parts. Complex events are aggregations of at least two disjoint
         events.
    •    Temporal relationship between events: different models for specifying the
         temporal properties of events are proposed such as: (1) a quality structure
         “composed of” time intervals and time intervals themselves to be “composed
         of” time points and (2) a model of time that admit intervals that are delimited
         by begin and end points.
    •    Participation of objects in events: represents the portion of an event that
         depends exclusively on a single object. Special cases of object participation in
         events are object creation, object change and object destruction events [19].
    •    Changes promoted by events: events are defined as mappings from and to
         situations in the world, in which endurants are characterized by bearing certain
         properties [3].
    •    Causation: UFO-B contemplates a theory of causation connecting situations
         brought about by events which in turn trigger the occurrence of other events.
    •    Manifestations of object dispositions: dispositions are considered as properties
         that are manifested in particular situations through the occurrence of events.
         They are existentially dependent and therefore inhere in particular objects. A
         situation triggers an event when this actuation activates the disposition that is
         manifested by that event.
     Most of these theories are neglected in BWW [7] and the upper-level ontology [8].
BWW defined events as a formal relation between two points in the state space of an
entity. It doesn’t support different aspects of events such as event mereology,
participation of endurants, temporal relations between events and object dispositions [4].
Kaneiwa et al. [8] proposed the Upper-Level Ontology of Events that classified the
events according to the nature of their participants between natural and artificial events.
In this ontology, objects as events can cause events which is rejected in UFO-B. UFO-B
has been extensively tested in practice and successfully employed as a reference model
for addressing problems from complex media management, enterprise architecture,
software engineering, and the modeling of events in petroleum exploration [6].
     Concerning the legal domain, UFO-L [23] is a recent legal core ontology that uses
domain-independent concepts provided by UFO to represent essential concepts of law
based on Alexy’s theory of fundamental rights ontology. In UFO-L, legal events are
defined in the frame of endurants as specialization of events. They are considered as
grounding for legal relationships such as legal contracts. UFO-L defines variety of legal
concepts such as Legal Agent, Legal Object, Legal Relator, Legal Moment, etc.

2.2. Events as Emergent from Scenes

As aforementioned, events are considered as synonyms of perdurants in their most
general sense. Meanwhile, a novel understanding of events has been proposed recently
in [5, 6] where authors suggested to stop considering “event” as a synonym of “perdurant”
and to distinguish two broad categories within perdurants: events and scenes. According
to [6], a scene is a maximal perdurant located in a convex region of space-time containing
all perdurants occurring there as parts. Therefore, events emerge from scenes through a
focusing process. The authors claim that all ordinary events have focus where their
participants are not involved in a homogeneous way, but rather at different levels of
involvement with their parts and qualities. More precisely, the focus consists of a
collection of object qualities that are involved in the event. Therefore, in one scene many
events emerge each one with different focus. Thus, events are manifestations of
individual qualities. This novel understanding of events will help to clarify the whole
picture and make possible the modeling of complex scenes involving multiple emerging
events [6].


3. Requirements on Events Modeling in the Legal Domain

Inspired by Scherp [21], we propose in this section two main categories of requirements
that need to be fulfilled by the intended core model of events in the legal domain:
functional and non-functional. The functional requirements define what needs to be
expressed by a common model of events and the non-functional requirements specify
how a model of events needs to be designed in order to be applicable. In the following,
a list of functional requirements is presented:
    •    R1-mereological structure of events: the mereological relationship between
         events in the legal domain should be supported in the core model since legal
         events, as any other type of events, may be composed of other events.
    •    R2-participation of objects in events: representing participation of objects and
         the roles they play in legal events.
    •    R3-changes promoted by events: events are considered as transformations
         from a portion of reality to another [4]. The intended core model of events
         should support the representation of this transformation in the legal domain.
    •    R4-temporal relationships between events: legal events, as any other type of
         events, are characterized by the unfolding over time. In the targeted core model,
         there is a need to model their temporal duration [21].
    •    R5-manifestation of object dispositions: dispositions are particularized
         properties of objects which are manifested in particular situations through the
         occurrence of events. In the targeted model, the occurrence of legal events by
         the manifestation of (legal) object dispositions should be analyzed.
    •    R6-causation: in the intended model, the causal relationship between legal
         events must be represented since legal events may cause other legal events.
    •    R7- events as emergent from scenes: according to [6], events are distinguished
         as proper parts of scenes. Therefore, a legal scene can be composed of legal
         events or events that are not legally defined as well.
    •    R8-manifesttaion of object qualities: as aforementioned, events are
         considered, in their new strict sense, as emergent from scenes through a
         focusing process [6]. In the targeted model, the focus legal relationship, that
         concerns the involvement of legal objects and their qualities in legal events,
         must be represented.
    In the other hand, the non-functional requirements comprise the extensibility of the
model to include future aspects for describing events. Moreover, the modularity is
essential to decrease the complexity of the intended model and to simplify its reusability.
The core model of legal events should be able to incorporate existing domain ontologies
and make use of it. Finally, the model needs to provide a clear separation of the structural
knowledge about legal events and legal objects from the domain knowledge.


4. A Pattern-Based Core Model of Events in the Legal Domain

This section represents the main contribution of this paper which is the derivation of
conceptual ontology patterns (COPs) from UFO-B and UFO-L and their combination
with the novel understanding of events for building a pattern-based core model of events
in the legal domain. COPs are small fragments of ontology conceptual models that
address a specific modeling issue and can be directly reused by importing them in
ontology under development [12]. They are intended to be used during the conceptual
modeling phase of an ontology development process [11]. A COP extracted from a
higher-level ontology can be used to support the development of lower-level ontologies
[17]. COPs should be encoded in a higher-order representation language [12]. OntoUML
[18] is an example of an ontology representation language that is suitable for this purpose.
This language has been designed to reflect the ontological distinctions and
axiomatization put forth by the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) [2,18].
     For the derivation of COPs from UFO-B and UFO-L, the approach presented in [17]
is applied. This approach is based mainly on a fragmentation process that tends to extract
sub-ontologies from UFO-B and UFO-L and splitting them into smaller pieces still
meaningful to the domain. These pieces are called Domain-Related Ontology Patterns
(DROPs). The DROPs that are extracted from UFO-B will be applied by extension in
the legal domain. This process is guided by a list of Competency Questions (CQs) that
can reveal modeling needs in small pieces. Furthermore, these modules will be reused
for building the core model of events in the legal domain taking into consideration their
combination with the modeling of the novel understanding of events as emergent from
scenes. In the following, the conceptual ontology patterns of the event model are
introduced and illustrated in diagrams encoded in OntoUML [18].


4.1. Mereology Pattern

The mereology pattern (Figure 1) implements three main requirements: R1, R4 and R7.
Two main CQs are addressed for this pattern: CQ1: How are legal events structured?
CQ2: How are legal events and scenes organized?
     The mereology pattern tends to represent how legal events relate to their parts and
to scenes. In UFO-B, events can be atomic or complex depending on their mereological
structure. While an atomic event has no parts, a complex event is an aggregation of at
least two events (that can themselves be atomic or complex) [4]. In this pattern, a similar
perspective is applied for Legal Events (or Legally Defined Event as defined in UFO-L).
     In addition, the new strict sense of events as emergent from scenes is taking into
consideration where Legal Events are distinguished as proper parts of Scenes [6].
Moreover, the mereology pattern allows for modeling temporal properties. The temporal
attributes of Legal Events, or Scenes, have values from special temporal datatypes that
support the concept of Time Intervals, which are composed of Time Points (begin and
end points) [19]. In this pattern, a simple temporal structure will be applied. This
structure is defined as a linear order of time points where each event, or a Scene, is framed
by a Time Interval which is associated with two values: begin and end. Finally, as Scenes
happen in a suitably restricted spatio-temporal region, the mereology pattern allows to
relate a Scene to a Spatial Region where it occurs.




                                  Figure 1. Mereology pattern.

4.2. Participation Pattern

The goal of this pattern (Figure 2) is to fulfill the requirement R2 for the representation
of the participation of objects in legal events. Three main competency questions guided
the modeling of this pattern, CQ1: What is a legal object participation? CQ2: What are
the types of legal object participation? CQ3: Who is involved in a legal object
participation?
     UFO-B defines participation of objects as the portion of an event that depends
exclusively on a single object. In addition, it contemplates the differentiation of roles
played by objects inside an event (the so-called processual roles). In this context, the
spatial properties of events are defined in terms of the spatial properties of their
participants [19]. Therefore, by the extension of this structure in the legal domain, a Legal
Object Participation is defined as a type of a Legal Event which depends exclusively on
a single Legal Object. In the participation pattern, special cases of Legal Object
Participation event are defined: Legal Object Creation, Legal Object Change and Legal
Object Destruction. In addition, the pattern implements the spatial properties of legal
objects that participate in legal events. The spatial properties of a legal event are defined
in the term of the Spatial Location of the Legal Participants.




                                 Figure 2. Participation pattern.

4.3. Manifestation of Qualities (Focus) Pattern

The main competency questions that guide the focus pattern are: CQ1: What is a focal
legal relationship? CQ2: Which are the legal moments that compose a focal legal
relationship? CQ3: Who is involved in a focal legal relationship? CQ4: Is there any legal
event that grounds the focal legal relationship?
     The manifestation of qualities, or Focus, pattern implements the requirement R8
which is derived from the novel understanding of events as emergent from scenes through
a focusing process [6]. The focus is manifested by the individual qualities and
relationships of the objects involved in events. Therefore, events are considered as
manifestations of object qualities. This pattern is based mainly on three individuals:
Legal Objects (Participants), Legal Events and Tropes. Two main kinds of Trope
individuals are identified: Intrinsic trope individuals or Qualities and Relational trope
individuals or Relators. Examples of Qualities are temperature, weight, intention or skill.
Examples of Relators are enrollment, marriage or medical treatment. The special type of
existential dependence relation that holds between a Trope individual x and the
individual y on which x depends is the relation of inherence. Existential dependence can
also be used to differentiate intrinsic and relational trope individuals: Qualities are
dependent on one single individual; Relators depend on two or more individuals (their
bearers), which they mediate [19]. In the Focus pattern (Figure 3), the Legal Relator
pattern is reused from UFO-L [23] for modeling the focus of legal events represented by
the Focal Legal Relationship. Two main Legal Participants are involved in the event
and the object qualities (e.g. Commitment and Claim) which are inherent in them.
                                     Figure 3. Focus pattern.

4.4. Manifestation of Disposition Pattern

Two main CQs are addressed in this pattern: CQ1: How dispositions are manifested by
atomic legal events? CQ2: How situations can trigger legal events indirectly?
     In UFO, besides the Qualities, the notion of particularized tropes includes also the
Dispositions. Examples of dispositions are the fragility of glass, the disposition of a
magnet to attract metallic material [4]. Dispositions are particularized properties that are
only manifested in particular situations and that can also fail to be manifested. The
manifestation will be through the occurrence of events [4]. As qualities, dispositions are
existentially dependent and therefore inhere in particular objects. In Figure 4, the
manifestation of disposition pattern is represented. This pattern implements the
requirement R5 where a given Situation activates Disposition that inheres in Legal
Objects which is manifested by an Atomic Legal Event.




                          Figure 4. Manifestation of dispositions pattern.

4.5. Changes and Causation Pattern

In this pattern (Figure 5), two main requirements R3 and R6 are fulfilled. The
competency questions addressed for this pattern are: CQ1: Can legal events cause the
occurrence of other legal events? CQ2: How legal events bring about situations? In UFO-
B, changes are fundamental aspects of events where events are considered as mappings
from and to situations in the world, in which endurants are characterized by bearing
certain properties [4]. Situations that are brought about by the manifestation of
dispositions and can activate other dispositions. The unfolding of the relations between
situations, dispositions and events with further activation and manifestation of other
dispositions can be used to characterize a useful form of (direct and indirect) causation
between events [3]. Two possible relations between situations and events are proposed
in UFO-B [20]: (i) a situation s triggers an event e, in the case that e occurs because of
the obtaining of s, and; (ii) an event brings about a situation s, in which case the
occurrence of an event e results in the situation s obtaining in the world at the time point
end-point(e). This structure is reused and extended for legal events (Figure 5).




                            Figure 5. Changes and causation pattern.



5. Application of the Event Model in the Domain of Carriage of Goods by Sea

In this section, the use of the core model of events is demonstrated by the application of
the ontology patterns (Section 3) in the domain of carriage of goods by sea. In fact, we
aim to develop a well-founded legal domain ontology for the traceability of goods. In
this ontology, events constitute a fundamental aspect such as, among others, loading,
discharging and delivering of goods. In addition, events that may occur during
transportation such as act or omission of the shipper, route deviation, loss, damage or
delay in delivery of goods, fire, piracy incidents, etc. For describing such events, the
different patterns that are defined in the core model of events will be combined, each
providing a specific part of the event description [21].
     A simple scenario about carriage of goods between two ports is proposed: A vessel,
operated by company X, the carrier, loads containers in Mombasa, Kenya, for carriage
to France, Le Havre port where they will be discharged. The company X issues bills of
lading to company Y, the shipper, for containers for which it enters into a contract
directly with them for carriage of the goods on the vessel. During the transportation of
goods, the vessel has deviated from its agreed route of voyage to another port (The
Légué, France). Therefore, the deviation of the route has resulted in a delay of 72 hours
for delivery of goods as well as a portion of the goods are unlawfully taken. In addition,
a problem occurred on the vessel concerning the ventilation that caused the maturation
of fruits in the containers. In Figure 6, a conceptual model of the proposed scenario is
illustrated. In this model, a Scene is observed which is composed of three main legal
events: Carriage of Goods, Route Deviation and Damage of Fruits. The Carriage of
Goods event is considered as a complex event composed of two sub-events: Loading
Containers and Discharging Containers. Two main legal objects (agents) participate in
the Carriage of Goods event: Carrier and Shipper. In addition, this event depends on
objects such as Containers and Vessel. Moreover, the Carriage of Goods event is
considered as a manifestation of a focal legal relationship “Carriage of Goods Contract”
that involves two legal participants: Carrier and Shipper. The focal legal relationship is
composed of qualities, Commitment and Claim, that inhere in the Carrier and the Shipper
respectively. The situation of Ventilation Problem, such as high temperature, activates a
disposition inhered in Fruits which is the Maturation. Therefore, this disposition is
manifested by an event: Damage of Fruits. Finally, the causation is represented in the
Route Deviation event that caused two resulted events: Delivery Delay and Theft of
Goods.




          Figure 6. Application of the core model of events in the domain of carriage of goods.



6. Related Works

Representing events in conceptual models is increasingly gaining widespread attention
specifically by the application of pattern-oriented approaches. In the literature, a pattern-
based core model of events (Event-Model-F) [21, 22] based on the foundational ontology
DOLCE is proposed to represent the occurrences in the real world and formally model
different relations and interpretations of events. The Event-Model-F provides a formal
representation of the different aspects of events in which humans participate such as time
and space, composition, correlation, and documentation. In our work, we have selected
the foundational ontology of events UFO-B for grounding the core model of events and
UFO-L for the legal background. In this context, different ontology patterns are derived,
extended and combined from UFO-B and UFO-L as well as we relied on the novel
understanding of events as emergent from scenes [6]. This combination has enriched our
model with different complex theories and aspects of events. In fact, one of the key
contributions of UFO-B is to extend a combination of existing results from formal
ontology in a fuller theory for supporting the foundations of events in conceptual
modeling [4]. In addition, the new strict sense of events allowed for modeling complex
scenes where multiple events can emerge. For the representation of the conceptual
models of the different ontology patterns, the ontologically well-founded modeling
language OntoUML has been used. In fact, OntoUML gives a clear methodological
support for deciding for which types in a model of endurants a behavioral model of
changes can be specified [3]. Moreover, the possibility of change can explicitly be
represented in OntoUML in terms of contingent types such as roles, phases and their
relations [3]. Therefore, the proposed core model of events in the legal domain has
fulfilled the main requirements and covered different complex aspects of events such as
the manifestation of object properties: dispositions and qualities that are not considered
in the Event-Model-F. Concerning the mereology and causation relationships, they are
enriched by adding concepts such as Scene and Situation. In the mereology pattern,
events are considered as proper parts of scenes. In the causation pattern, the situations
may cause the occurrence of events through the activation of dispositions.


7. Conclusion

In this paper, a pattern-based core model of legal events grounded on the foundational
ontology of events UFO-B and the legal core ontology UFO-L is presented. This model
is designed by applying a pattern-based approach aimed to derive, extend and combine
conceptual ontology patterns from UFO-B and UFO-L. In addition, we relied on the
novel understanding of events as emergent from scenes. Therefore, the model allows for
a formal representation of different complex aspects of events in the legal domain such
as: participation of legal objects in events, legal objects dispositions, legal objects
qualities and focal legal relationships as well as the causation and mereology
relationships. Moreover, the modular aspect of the model which is composed of different
ontology patterns encourages its reusability. Actually, separating the model into smaller
patterns allows for better managing the complexity of evens [21] and for better
reusability of these patterns. In future works, additional notions of events will be
considered such as intentional and non-intentional events. This model will be used for
building a well-founded ontology for the domain of carriage of goods by sea for
reasoning and traceability purposes.


Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the European Union with the European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF) under Grant Agreement n°HN0002134 in the project
CLASSE 2 (“Les Corridors Logistiques: Application a la Vallée de la Seine et son
Environnement”).


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