Using the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) for
Grounding Legal Domain Ontologies
Mirna El Ghosh
1
, Habib Abdulrab
1
, Hala Naja
2
and Mohamad Khalil
3
1
LITIS, INSA du Rouen, Saint Etienne du Rouvray, Rouen, France
2
Lebanese University, Faculty of Sciences, Tripoli, Lebanon
3
CRSI Research Center, Lebanese University, Faculty of Engineering, Tripoli, Lebanon
Keywords: Ontology Grounding, Conceptual Modelling Process, Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modelling, ONTOUML,
Foundational Ontology, UFO, Legal Ontologies.
Abstract: In this paper, the concept of ontology-driven conceptual modelling is outlined where grounding a modular
legal domain ontology in the unified foundational ontology UFO is overviewed. The domain ontology is
modularized in four independent modules. The top ontology modules are discussed in this work: upper and
core. The ontology modelling language OntoUML is used for the conceptual modelling process.
1 INTRODUCTION
In this paper, the concept of grounding domain
ontologies in foundational ontologies is discussed
specifically in the legal domain. Generally, the
grounding concept is defined by placing a
foundation. The ontology grounding is introduced by
Harnad who claimed that existing approaches to
ontology design pose the classical symbol grounding
problem (Harnad, 1990). Harnad wondered how a
logical theory of a concept, that can be explicit, easier
to communicate and axiomatized, is feasibly related
to a human understanding of that same concept and
avoiding constructing an abstract theory or model for
another model. Moreover, how are its primitives
grounded outside the formal system? In other words,
how the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol
system can be made intrinsic to the system, rather
than just parasitic on the meanings in human head
(Harnad, 1990). Furthermore, some studies such as
(Kohn, 2003) illustrated the ontology grounding by
avoiding resorting endlessly from one formal system
to another in explaining the meaning of symbols.
They claim that if ontologies are not grounded in
something that their users share, they will be of very
limited practical use. Therefore, ontology
engineering methods have to supply a list of concepts
(or at least of the kinds of concepts) considered
meaningful outside the formal theories (Kohn, 2003).
In other words, ontology grounding is expressed
by the application of foundational ontologies in
conceptual modelling for building domain ontologies.
In this context, grounding domain ontologies using
existent foundational ontologies refers to the (partial)
reuse process of the basic categories of a foundational
ontology.
Foundational ontologies are the most general and
formal ontologies (Borgo and Leitão, 2004).
Theoretically, they are well-founded domain
independent systems of categories that have been
successfully used to improve the quality of
conceptual models and semantic interoperability
(Guizzardi et al., 2010). Moreover, reuse of
foundational ontologies can facilitate and speeding up
the ontology development process by preventing to
reinvent known modelling solutions (Keet, 2011).
In other words, ontology grounding is expressed
by the application of foundational ontologies in
conceptual modelling for building domain ontologies.
In this context, grounding domain ontologies using
existent foundational ontologies refers to the (partial)
reuse process of the basic categories of a foundational
ontology.
Foundational ontologies are the most general and
formal ontologies (Borgo and Leitão, 2004).
Theoretically, they are well-founded domain
independent systems of categories that have been
successfully used to improve the quality of
conceptual models and semantic interoperability
(Guizzardi et al., 2010). Moreover, reuse of
foundational ontologies can facilitate and speeding up
El Ghosh M., Abdulrab H., Naja H. and Khalil M.
Using the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) for Grounding Legal Domain Ontologies.
DOI: 10.5220/0006507302190225
In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KEOD 2017), pages 219-225
ISBN: 978-989-758-272-1
Copyright
c
2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
the ontology development process by preventing to
reinvent known modelling solutions (Keet, 2011).
Actually, we motivate to build a legal domain
ontology for modelling the legal norms of the
criminal domain serving as a basis for legal reasoning
purposes. More specifically, the legal domain
ontology will be used as a knowledge base for a legal
decision support system. In this context, a
foundational and legal core ontologies are reused for
grounding this ontology. Therefore, the conceptual
architecture of the legal domain ontology is
modularized in different modules including the upper
and core modules that serve for the grounding aspect.
The modularization technique is inspired from the
literature that suggests that legal ontologies may be
distinguished by the levels of abstraction of the
discipline they represent (Guizzardi et al., 2010) -
(Borgo, 2011), with the key distinction being between
different levels such as upper, core and domain.
From these perspectives, a modular middle-out
approach is introduced to support the grounding
process of the legal domain ontology (El Ghosh et al.,
2016). The approach is based on ontology
modularization process where the legal domain
ontology is modularized into four independent
modules stated on different levels: upper, core,
domain and domain-specific. The upper and core
modules are constructed for the grounding using a
top-down strategy that performs ontology-driven
conceptual modelling process guided by reusing
foundational and legal core ontologies such as the
unified foundational ontology (UFO) (Guizzardi and
Wagner, 2005a) and the LKIF-Core (Hoekstra et al.,
2007) respectively. The upper module represents the
most general concepts and relations that cover all the
domains (such as Agent, Act and Action). The core
module provides a definition of structural knowledge
in the legal domain. For instance, concepts, such as
Legal_Source, Legal_Act and Legal_Document, are
common for all the legal fields (criminal, civil, etc.).
Meanwhile, the domain and domain-specific modules
are extracted from the available sources of the
domain, such as legislation and codes, by applying a
bottom-up strategy as an ontology learning process
with the support of NLP techniques. For more details
about this strategy, refer to (El Ghosh et al., 2017).
At the end, the modules will be integrated together
to compose the global ontology (see Figure 1).
In this work, the top-down is discussed and the
upper and core modules are overviewed.
The remainder of this paper is organized as
follows: In section 2, the ontology-driven conceptual
modelling is overviewed. Section 3 presents the
unified foundational ontology UFO. The ontology-
grounding process is discussed in section 4. Finally,
section 5 concludes the paper.
Figure 1: Modular middle-out approach.
2 ONTOLOGY-DRIVEN
CONCEPTUAL MODELLING
As aforementioned, the top-down strategy of the
middle-out approach represents an ontology-driven
conceptual modelling process (ODCM) guided by
reusing foundational and legal core ontologies for
grounding the legal domain ontology. ODCM is
firstly introduced by Guarino et al. (Guarino and
Schneider, 2002).
Generally, conceptual modelling is defined as
the activity of representing aspects of the physical
and social world for the purpose of communication,
learning and problem solving among human users”
(Mylopoulos, 1992). In other words, conceptual
modelling is concerned with identifying, analyzing
and describing the relevant concepts and constraints
of a domain with the help of a modelling language
that is based on a small set of basic meta-concepts
(Guizzardi et al., 2004).
In order to make conceptual modelling languages
more suitable for representing the real world and less
oriented by systems, the attention of researchers have
turned to philosophy where ontologies, dealing with
the modelling reality, represent a branch of it
(Verdonck, 2014).
Therefore, the ontologies were introduced in
order to provide a foundation for conceptual
modelling by expressing the fundamental elements of
a domain (Guarino, 1998). Moreover, ontologies are
used to analyze and improve existing conceptual
modelling languages (Wand, 1996). Thus,
ontological or ontology-driven modelling is
concerned with capturing the relevant entities of a
domain in an ontology of that domain using an
ontology specification language that is based on a
small set of basic, domain-independent ontological
categories (forming an upper level ontology)
(Guizzardi et al., 2004).
Recently, ontology-driven conceptual modelling
is defined by Guizzardi as the utilization of
ontological theories, coming from areas such as
formal ontology, cognitive science and philosophical
logics, to develop engineering artifacts (e.g.
modelling languages, methodologies, design patterns
and simulators) for improving the theory and practice
of conceptual modelling (Guizzardi, 2012). In other
words, ODCM aims at formalizing conceptual
modelling languages for reducing different kind of
interpretations of concepts (Kohn, 2003).
3 THE UNIFIED
FOUNDATIONAL ONTOLOGY
Generally, foundational ontologies define a range of
top-level domain-independent ontological categories,
which form a general foundation for more elaborated
domain-specific ontologies (Guizzardi and Wagner,
2005a), (Borgo, 2004). Various foundational
ontologies exist in the literature such as DOLCE
(Masolo, 2003) and UFO (Guizzardi and Wagner,
2005a). Four our work, UFO is the most convenient
for two main reasons: (1) its successful application in
a large number of domains ranging from natural
science domains such as Petroleum and Gas and
Electrophysiology of the heart to social domais such
as organizations, services and software (Griffo,
2015); (2) the fact that UFO comprises a rich theory
of relations and complex relational properties that is
absent in other foundational ontologies (Guizzardi,
2005c).
The unified foundational ontology UFO is an
example of a descriptive foundational ontology that
has been constructed for more than a decade
employing results from formal ontology, cognitive
psychology, linguistics, philosophical logics, but also
significant accumulated empirical and theoretical
results from the area of conceptual modelling in
computer science (Griffo, 2015). UFO is initially
proposed by Guizzardi and Wagner (Guizzardi and
Wagner, 2005a) and developed to support the
activities of both conceptual and organizational
modelling. Therefore, UFO permits the building of an
ontology by reusing some generic concepts such as
category, kind, subkind, relator, role and role mixin
where the ontologist does not need to rebuild these
concepts.
The concept kind, for instance, provides a
principle of application and a principle of identity for
its instances (Guizzardi, 2005b). It represents a rigid
concept, i.e., a class that applies necessarily to its
instances. In other words, instances of these types will
continue to be so as long as they exist in the model
(Guizzardi, 2005b). A kind can be described in a
taxonomic structure where its subtypes are also rigid
types known as subkinds (e.g., Man and Woman)
(Guerson et al., 2014).
The concept role, in turn, is an anti-rigid concept,
applying contingently to its instances (e.g., Offender,
Instigator).
A phase is an anti-rigid concept that it is defined
by a partition of a kind and whose contingent
instantiation condition is related to intrinsic changes
of an instance of that kind.
A relator (e.g. entities with the power of
connecting other entities) is a rigid concept and
existentially depends on the instances it connects
through mediation relations.
UFO is divided into three layered sets:
UFO-A: ontology of objects, defines terms related
to endurants such as universal, relator, role,
intrinsic moment;
UFO-B: ontology of events, defines terms related
to perdurants such as event, state, atomic event,
complex event;
UFO-C: defines terms related to intentional and
social entities including linguistic aspects such as
social agent, social object, social role and
normative description.
The current work covers two fragments from UFO,
UFO-B and UFO-C, for grounding the legal domain
ontology in order to build the upper and core modules
since they define some basic concepts for the criminal
domain such as Agent, Intentional Moment, Action,
Event, and Normative Description. In order to make
possible the activity of conceptual modelling via
UFO, a conceptual modelling language, named
OntoUML (Benevides et al., 2009a) is used.
OntoUML is a well-founded modelling language that
allows modellers to formalize world-views in a
technologically neutral way, aiding in the solution of
such interoperability challenges (Benevides and
Guizzardi, 2009b). According to (Guerson et al.,
2014), this language has been successfully employed
in a number of industrial projects in several domains
such as Petroleum and Gas, News Information
Management, E-Government and Telecom.
OntoUML uses the ontological constraints of UFO as
modelling primitives and is specified above the UML
2.0 meta-model (Guizzardi, 2005b). To build,
evaluate and implement OntoUML models, a model-
based environment is needed such as the standalone
tool OLED (OntoUML Lightweight Editor)
(Benevides and Guizzardi, 2009b).
4 TOP-DOWN STRATEGY
As aforementioned, the top-down strategy represents
an ontology-driven conceptual modelling process
since it will be based on reusing UFO for grounding
the legal domain ontology. In this section, the strategy
and the resulted ontology modules, upper and core,
are overviewed.
4.1 Upper Module
The upper module consists of abstract concepts and
relations which are effectively independent of any
specific domain for grounding the legal domain
ontology. Concerning the conceptual modelling
process of the upper module, the ontology modelling
language OntoUML is used for representing the upper
concepts reused from UFO in order to compose the
upper ontology module (see Figure 2) (Guizzardi,
2005b).
Figure 2: Conceptualization process of upper module.
For a well-founded building of this module, a
partial reuse of existent validated foundational, or
top-level, ontologies can help. In the literature,
several works seek for reusing concepts from
foundational ontologies in order to support in
maintaining a well-structured construction of domain
ontologies that could serve as a future reusable
artifact (Torres et al., 2011). Thus, the upper module
is built by reusing the concepts and relations of the
unified foundational ontology UFO represented using
OntoUML as an ontology modelling language, in
order to form the conceptualization of the upper
module. Two main layers are partially reused from
UFO: UFO-C and UFO-B.
4.1.1 UFO-C
There are list of essential concepts in UFO-C to reuse
for building the upper module, mainly those related to
social entities such as Agents and Objects (see Figure
3).
Figure 3: Fragment of upper module in OntoUML.
Agents can be physical (e.g. Person) or social (e.g.
Organization) (see figure 4).
Figure 4: The concept Agent in upper module.
Figure 5: Object in upper module in OntoUML.
Objects are also categorized in physical (e.g.
book) and social objects (e.g. normative description)
(see Figure 5). Normative_Description defines one or
more rules/norms recognized by at least one
Social_Agent. Regulations and constitutions are
examples of normative description.
4.1.2 UFO-B
The ontology of perdurants, UFO-B, defines Event,
which is a basic concept in the criminal domain (e.g.
crime is an event), as a main category. In UFO-B,
events can be atomic or complex depending on their
mereological structure (Guizzardi et al., 2013).
Complex events are aggregations of at least two
events that can themselves be atomic or complex (see
Figure 6).
Figure 6: Event of upper module in OntoUML.
In UFO-B, an event can be an Action or
Participation (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Event in upper module in OntoUML.
Actions are performed by agents and considered
as intentional events caused by intentions (see Figure
8).
Figure 8: Action in upper module in OntoUML.
Participation can be for agents and objects (see
Figure 9).
Figure 9: Participation in upper module in OntoUML.
Therefore, participation of an agent can be
intentional or unintentional (see Figure 10).
Figure 10: Agent_Participation in upper module in
OntoUML.
The intentional participations are actions and
termed here Action_Contribution.
4.2 Core Module
The core module is built by reusing the concepts and
relations of an existent validated legal core ontology
such as LKIF-Core (Hoekstra et al., 2007). Actually
the core concepts are represented in the unified
foundational ontology UFO, using OntoUML as an
ontology modelling language, in order to compose the
conceptualization of the core module which is
represented by the core ontology module (see Figure
11).
Figure 11: Conceptualization process of the core module.
Figure 12: Fragment of the core module.
Generally, core ontologies provide a broad view
of a given domain, such as the legal domain in this
study, suitable for different target domains such as
criminal and civil law (Guarino and Oberle, 2009). In
the domain of conceptual modelling, core ontologies
are used for providing real-world semantics for
conceptual modelling languages (Guizzardi and
Wagner, 2011). Concerning the core module, it
consists of concepts and relations that are common
across the domains of law and can provide the basis
for specialization into domain and domain-specific
concepts. In order to build this module, the legal core
ontology LKIF-Core (Hoekstra et al., 2007) have
been reused since it contains essential legal concepts
such as Medium, Document, Legal_Source,
Legal_Document, and Code. In this study, list of basic
concepts of LKIF-Core are represented using the
generic concepts of UFO (see Figure 12).
5 CONCLUSION
This paper discussed the application of foundational
and core ontologies in conceptual modelling for
grounding a well-founded legal domain ontology. A
case-study that describes the partial reuse of existent
validated ontologies such as the unified foundational
ontology UFO and the legal core ontology LKIF-Core
is presented. Throughout this study, we have
illustrated the importance of these ontologies in the
conceptual modelling process for building consistent
legal domain ontologies. In this paper, a modular legal
domain ontology is presented. The upper and core
modules are developed as a grounding modules for the
ontology. The modelling process of these modules is
discussed. The ontology modelling language
OntoUML has been used for this purpose since the
grounding process is based mainly on the unified
foundational ontology UFO. For the upper module,
concepts and relations from UFO-C and UFO-B have
been reused. For the core module, concepts and
relations from the legal core ontology LKIF-Core has
been reused by defining them in the context of UFO
using OntoUML.
After building the upper and core modules, they
will be integrated using semantic mappings such as
parent-child, or hierarchical relationships since they
are located on vertical conceptual levels. The
integration process will be applied as well for the
domain and domain-specific modules. At the end, the
global modular ontology will be used as a knowledge
base for a legal decision support system that performs
legal reasoning purposes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the European Union
with the European Regional Development Fund
(ERDF) under Grant Agreement n°HN0002134 in the
project CLASSE 2 (“Les Corridors Logistiques:
Application a la Vallee de la Seine et son
Environnement”), Lebanese University and the
National Support from the National Council for
Scientific Research in Lebanon (CNRS).
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