=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Using New Standards to Develop IC Ontologies
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-713/STIDS_A2_Lee.pdf
|volume=Vol-713
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/stids/Lee10
}}
==Using New Standards to Develop IC Ontologies==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-713/STIDS_A2_Lee.pdf
Using New Standards to Develop IC Ontologies
Richard Lee
Booz Allen Hamilton
8283 Greensboro Drive
McLean, VA, 22102, USA
lee_richard@bah.com
Abstract: In this paper we describe recent work in adapting various new
OWL and ontology standards to ontology development for the IC and
DoD. We present work done to adapt the Universal Core Semantic Layer
(UCore SL) standard ontology to support intelligence analysts. We show
how new features in the OWL 2 standard can be used to make such
ontologies simpler and more readable, and how they facilitate modeling
the relationships of concepts across models. We present a proposed
standard security model using OWL 2. We conclude with planned future
ontology development using these standards.
Key words: Ontologies, OWL 2, Universal Core Semantic Layer,
Standards
1. Introduction
Over the last several years, we have created OWL ontologies for use with the METS
(Metadata Extraction and Tagging Service) system [1, 2], to represent the document
metadata and semantic extraction results it produces. In the most recent iteration, these
ontologies included and extended OWL versions of (parts of) SUMO, TWPDES, DDMS,
ISM, code lists from ISO et al, and the “standard” Time and GML ontologies.
When the Universal Core (UCore) 2 standard [3] was released, it included a simple
OWL taxonomy, so we added declarations to the master METS ontology to relate its
concepts to those in the UCore taxonomy.
Barry Smith et al at NCOR started from the UCore model to develop a full
foundational OWL ontology called the Universal Core Semantic Layer (UCore SL) [4].
In our recent (non-METS) work, we have developed an ontology based on it, to support a
cell of IC/DoD analysts. We have also begun incorporating new OWL 2 [5] features.
STIDS 2010 Proceedings Page 66 of 135
2. Universal Core Semantic Layer Adaptation
In our most recent work, we were tasked with supporting a group of analysts by devising
a consistent and inter-related set of models for their wide range of data sources and
analytical processes, covering the usual assortment of people, organizations, and places,
as well as numerous kinds of materials, equipment, and processes. We elected to create a
set of ontologies, mapping to OWL each of:
the schema for the desired subset of each data source (MIDB, TIDE, Artemis, …)
the Palantir ontology we developed with the analysts
the common organizational models called PMESII and CTAF
We also created a “master” OWL ontology, based on UCore SL, which covered all the
concepts of interest to the analysts, and provided the OWL declarations needed to relate
the concepts across all the other ontologies, for data mapping and correlation purposes.
In order to do this, we of course needed to extend UCore SL, adding whole
sublattices of concepts under various of its concepts. For example, we have a handful of
new classes refining UCore SL’s ActOfCommunication. Similarly, we have new classes
under its Vehicle and Sensor. In doing this, we borrowed heavily from SUMO [6]. For
example, the whole area of Equipment / Sensor / Vehicle / Weapon is one where we
found it expedient to insert a few higher-level concepts from SUMO. Since the various
data sources, and UCore SL, differed on the question of which, if any, of the latter 3
concepts belonged under the former, SUMO’s Device and some of its subclasses were the
perfect root under which to organize and relate all those concepts from all the other
models. Thus, for a representative sample of that part of the ontology, we have:
STIDS 2010 Proceedings Page 67 of 135
… etc …
We also found it useful to borrow from SUMO to impose a bit more structure and
detail in other areas, such as Geophysical and Geopolitical concepts.
3. OWL 2 Use for Simplifying Ontologies
The above examples follow the UCore SL practice of carefully declaring all the
disjointWith relationships, including declaring each pair (redundantly) in both directions.
One of the new features in OWL 2 is a pair of constructs for declaring this information in
a cleaner, more compact fashion. Since some of the classes above are allowed to overlap
(for example, Weapon can overlap both ExplosiveDevice and Vehicle), we don’t have a
nice clean partition which would enable removing all the disjointWith’s, but using the
new AllDisjointClasses still helps somewhat:
STIDS 2010 Proceedings Page 68 of 135
… etc …
4. OWL 2 Use for Relating Ontologies
One of the principles in our modeling work was to represent all multi-faceted things as
first-class objects, with classes in the ontology. In particular, it was clear that Locations
should be represented in that way. By attaching properties to a Location, such as location
containment (address contained in city contained in etc), location adjacency, location
position (coordinates), even the Political, Military, Economic, etc circumstances of a
location, the door is opened to reasoning about locations and the things at those locations.
Some of the RDB models we worked with made the same decisions on first-class objects,
but many did not. For example, to relate a Location to some Person, Organization, Event,
et al, the value of the relationship (birthplace, residence, affiliation, destination, et al)
would often be, not a pointer to a Location record, but simply a string naming the
location (often, just a country name).
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Since one of our goals was to relate concepts across models, these string-vs-object
differences were a problem. Again, OWL 2 introduces a handy construct which makes it
possible to relate the two approaches. If, say, model a represents birthCountry as simply
the name of a country, whereas model b represents birthCountry as a link to a country
which has a name, we can indicate the equivalence via:
5. OWL 2 Use for a Standard Security Model
When the new OWL 2 model was discussed at the 2008 Semantic Technology
Conference, it was noted that the new annotation property capabilities were suited for
capturing information such as security, provenance, and confidence, all uses of great
interest to this community. We have accordingly mapped the IC’s recently-released XML
security model, IC-ISM v3, into an OWL ontology called ISM3 using the new constructs.
We have defined a property for each of the ISM v3 XML attributes, a Security class
as their domain, and a security annotation property to relate a Security class instance to
anything. We have mapped each of the “CVEs” (Controlled Vocabulary Enumerations)
defined by the IC-ISM v3 XML specification into the OWL equivalent. For example:
CVE: Classification (US)
allowed values for a classification, US-
only
UNCLASSIFIED
CONFIDENTIAL
SECRET
TOP SECRET
STIDS 2010 Proceedings Page 70 of 135
In contrast to the usage of Security above, which annotates each entry in the
enumeration with its security markings, we note that usual practice would be the use of
annotated axioms, each of which simultaneously asserts and annotates a triple:
We should note that ICS500-21 "Tagging of Intelligence and Intelligence-Related
Information" directs that all XML documents shall use the ISM XML standard for
security markings. This is of course impossible for XML languages such as RDF/XML.
But the rationale for that directive is obvious, and applies to OWL data as well. We urge
the community to agree on a standard OWL ontology for security, so that it can be
approved as an alternative, and provide the same benefits for OWL use that agreeing on
ISM XML does for XML use. We offer this as a possible approach for that standard. We
suggest that a similar standard for provenance (sourcing) would be beneficial as well.
6. Future Work
We plan to:
incorporate mappings to UCore SL into the METS ontology
return to the other project to model and map additional data sources and concepts
continue retrofitting OWL 2 constructs in both
continue devising ontologies such as IC-ISM v3, ideally in coordination with
others across the community
7. References
1. Lee, R: The Use of Ontologies to Support Intelligence Analysis, Ontologies in the
Intelligence Community Conference (2007)
2. METS: http://purl.org/mets
3. Universal Core: https://www.ucore.gov/
4. Smith, B., Vizenor, L., Schoening, J.: Universal Core Semantic Layer, Ontologies in
the Intelligence Community Conference (2007)
5. OWL2: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/
6. SUMO: http://www.ontologyportal.org/
STIDS 2010 Proceedings Page 71 of 135