7th International Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WoMO 2013)

April 2, 2013

MODULARITY, studied for years in software engineering, allows mechanisms for easy and flexible reuse, generalization, structuring, maintenance, design patterns, and comprehension. In formal and applied ontology, modularity is central to reducing the complexity of designing and understanding ontologies, and to facilitating ontology verification, reasoning, development, maintenance and integration.

Recent research on ontology modularity shows substantial progress in foundations of modularity, techniques of modularization and modular development, distributed reasoning and empirical evaluation. These results provide a solid foundation and exciting prospects for further research and development.

The workshop continues a series of successful events that have been an excellent venue for practitioners and researchers to discuss latest and current work. The most recent WoMOs were held at ESSLLI 2011 and FOIS/ICBO 2012. This time WoMO is organised as a workshop of LPNMR 2013: the 12th International Conference on Logic Programming and Non-monotonic Reasoning. LPNMR is well-established as the main conference in the field.

The workshop will be open to all attendants of LPMNR’13 and its workshops. Workshop speakers will be required to register for WoMO via the LPMNR’13 website. Registration for WoMO only will be possible.

TOPICS include, but are not limited to:
– What is Modularity: kinds of modules and their properties; modules vs. contexts; design patterns; granularity of representation;

– Logical/Foundational Studies: modular ontology languages; reconciling inconsistencies across modules; formal structuring of modules; heterogeneity; hybrid theories; intertheory relations (conservativity, interpretability, strong equivalence, inseparability, etc.);

– Algorithmic Approaches: distributed and incremental reasoning; modularization and module extraction; sharing, linking, reuse; privacy; complexity of reasoning; implemented systems;

– Evaluation of modularizations: case studies or other analyses of ontology modularizations (why it is modularized in a certain way, what does it address, how can it be improved); how to measure the adequacy of a modularization; comparison of modularizations with respect to philosophical, logical, reasoning, cognitive, or social aspects;

– Applications: semantic web; life sciences; earth sciences; bio-ontologies; natural language processing; space and time; ambient intelligence; social intelligence; technology and engineering; collaborative ontology development and ontology versioning.