Applying Standards to Information Centric Operations
These tendencies – a focus on words rather than concepts , data and data shapes rather than truth makers and so on – will have no impact on the integrity of any stand-alone ontology application . However , there is no guarantee that an ontology developed for one use case will capture concepts reflected in data across the rest of the problem space . This may go some way towards explaining why these have not enabled a seamless connection between data and reality .
3.2 ONTOLOGIES IN WIDER INDUSTRY
A more principled approach to ontology modeling can be seen in the standardization work of the Industrial Ontology Foundry ( IOF ) 11 . This is an ontology standards project to represent subject matter in industrial applications such as manufacturing and supply chain management . The IOF ontology uses a Top Level Ontology ( TLO ) called the Basic Formal Ontology ( BFO ) 12 . BFO is widely used in a range of scientific applications and is distinguished by having a “ Realist ” stance , meaning that a BFO ontology may only represent things that exist in some real or possible world .
While BFO may not be the best fit for some industrial subject matter , for example in reflecting the distinctions between intended designs and actuality , the IOF experience clearly demonstrates that the use of a well-established TLO brings much-needed rigor and discipline to the set of ontologies that are developed under this standard .
Similarly the Pistoia Alliance 13 has undertaken the first phase of a project to model the processes or recipes , by which pharmaceutical products are manufactured 14 . This uses a TLO and makes clear distinctions between for example an intended or planned process activity , and the actuality of carrying out that activity .
Another good use of a TLO has been observed in a project under way for the United Kingdom ’ s Digital Twin project 15 . One case study in this program 16 addresses energy efficiency in the UK housing stock and uses an ontology to integrate concepts such as household energy efficiency appraisals and benchmarks . The TLO used is the Information Exchange Standard ( IES4 ) 17 , a 4D realist ontology that follows the BORO Methodology 18 . Again some of the concepts in play in these datasets , such as energy efficiency benchmarks , are not a trivial fit to this specific TLO , but the existence of the TLO and the discipline that it represents [ 9 ] means that the resulting
11 https :// oagi . org / pages / industrial-ontologies
12 https :// basic-formal-ontology . org /
13 https :// www . pistoiaalliance . org /
14 https :// www . pistoiaalliance . org / projects / pharmaceutical-cmc-process-ontology /
15 https :// www . gov . uk / government / collections / the-national-digital-twin-programme-ndtp
16
Retrofitting in housing : National Digital Twin Programme ( NDTP ). Available : https :// www . gov . uk / government / case-studies / retrofitting-in-housing-national-digital-twinprogramme-ndtp
17 https :// telicent . io / ies-ontology /
18 https :// www . borosolutions . net / librarysearch ? search _ api _ views _ fulltext = 18
February 2025