Modeling Changes for SHOIN(D) Ontologies: An Exhaustive Structural Model

Ontology development starts with a rigorous ontological analysis that provides a conceptualization of the domain to model agreed by the community. An ontology, specified in a formal language, approximates the intended models of this conceptualization. It needs then to be revised and refined until an ontological commitment is found. Also ulterior updates, responding to changes in the domain and/or the conceptualization, are expected to occur throughout the ontology life cycle. To handle a consistent application of changes, a couple of ontology evolution methodologies have been proposed. Maintaining the structural consistency is one of the ontology evolution criteria. It implies modeling changes with respect to how the constructs of the ontology language are used. However there is no ontology model, among those proposed, that allows to exhaustively describe changes and their impact for languages based on SHOIN(D) description logic. To bridge this gap, this paper presents a complete structural ontology model suited for change modeling on SHOIN(D) ontologies. The application of this model is illustrated along the paper through the description of an ontology example inspired by the UOBM ontology benchmark and its evolution.