Event-Model-F

Abstract

The lack of a formal model of events hinders interoperability in distributed event-based systems. In this paper, we present a formal model of events, called Event-Model-F. The model is based on the foundational ontology DOLCE+DnS Ultralight (DUL) and provides comprehensive support to represent time and space, objects and persons, as well as mereological, causal, and correlative relationships between events. In addition, the Event-Model-F provides a flexible means for event composition, modeling event causality and event correlation, and representing different interpretations of the same event. The Event-Model-F is developed following the pattern-oriented approach of DUL, is modularized in different ontologies, and can be easily extended by domain specific ontologies.

Ontology

The event ontology F is available here: model.owl

Example

emergency-example.zip - This file is an example of an event modeled in our F ontology. It demonstrates the application of the composition pattern and participation pattern in the domain of emergency response and is taken from the technical report.

flooding-example.zip - Another example in the emergency response domain. It models an excerpt from a flooding.

soccer-example.zip - This zip-archive contains a set of ontologies describing a soccer game event in our event model F. It demonstrates the full use of all patterns of F, namely participation, causality, correlation, composition, and interpretation. It further shows how a domain specific ontology can be embedded and used to describe the events happening during a soccer game.

weekend-example.zip - This ontology is an example of an event modeled in our F ontology from the domain of tourism. It defines a two-day weekend trip with three people participating in it. On the first day, there is a sub-event dinner. On the second day are two sub-events a visit to a museum and a sight.

Integrating and Using Domain-Specific Knowledge

The Event-Model-F is used within the WeKnowIt project in the SemaPlorer++ application, an extension of the SemaPlorer application for creating and sharing event descriptions. In the course of this work, a domain specific ontology on emergency incidents provided by the Sheffield City Council (SCC) has been the developed. This SCC ontology on emergency incidents has been aligned with DOLCE+DnS Ultralight and thus can be directly used with the Event-Model-F and the SemaPlorer++ application, respectively. By this, we have

The Sheffield Emergency Incident Ontology is available from here.

Implemenation and Installation

There is a Java API for the Event-Model-F released under open source license. It is available from: https://launchpad.net/eventmodelf

A bazaar-client (see http://bazaar.canonical.com/en/) is needed for getting the code of the API.
After installing the client, you can checkout the latest branch. Only the trunk directory
is used. Thus, you should checkout from https://code.launchpad.net/~event-model-f-team/eventmodelf/trunk
That can be done e.g. in the terminal or console using the following command:

bzr co lp:~event-model-f-team/eventmodelf/trunk

The code of the API should now be located in the trunk folder. The API is realized as a Maven project. To import this Maven project into Eclipse, a Maven Eclipse plugin is needed. The favoured one is m2eclipse and can be installed from the Eclipse update site: http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update/

Afterwards you can import the project into Eclipse. Go to "File"-->"Import" an choose "General"-->"Maven project". Set the root directory to the directory of the checked out trunk folder. The pom.xml of the Event-Model-F should appear in the list below. Choose it and click finish. Now Maven retrieves the dependencies from a remote repository and the API is ready to use.

The principle design of the API is a layered architecture:

• Layer 3: package "extended" : Convenience Layer F
• Layer 2: package "core" : Core Layer F -- close to the pattern as possible; reflects all entities and properties
• Layer 1: Sesame

Applications using the API should ONLY use the "extended" package and never apply the "core" package.

Publications

A. Scherp, T. Franz, C. Saathoff and S. Staab, F---A Model of Events based on the Foundational Ontology DOLCE+DnS Ultralight, International Conference on Knowledge Capturing (K-CAP), Redondo Beach, CA, USA, September, 2009 (download pdf, 350kB).
 

A. Scherp, T. Franz, C. Saathoff, S. Staab: A Model of Events based on a Foundational Ontology, Technical Report of the Department of Computer Science, 02/2009, University of Koblenz-Landau, ISSN (Online) 1864-0850 (download pdf, 800kB)

Contact

Dr. Ansgar Scherp

Carsten Saathoff

Thomas Franz

Student workers

Daniel Schmeiß

Chantal Neuhaus

Project

WeKnowIt, http://www.weknowit.eu/