A MAUT APPROACH FOR REUSING DOMAIN ONTOLOGIES ON THE BASIS OF THE NeOn METHODOLOGY

Knowledge resource reuse is becoming a widespread approach in the ontology engineering field because it can speed up the ontology development process. In this context, the NeOn Methodology specifies some guidelines for reusing different types of knowledge resources (ontologies, nonontological resources, and ontology design patterns). These guidelines prescribe how to perform the different activities involved in any of the diverse types of reuse processes. One such activity is to select the best knowledge resources for reuse in an ontology development. This selection activity is a complex decision-making problem involving conflicting objectives, like understandability, integration or reliability. We propose a multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) approach to deal with the selection of the best domain ontologies for reuse, stressing the identification of attributes to measure ontology performances. We take advantage of the sensitivity analysis tools provided by the GMAA system, a PC-based decision support system based on an additive multi-attribute utility model, to exploit imprecise information on the inputs. An example concerning the selection of a subset of ontologies for reuse in the development of a new ontology in the sports domain illustrates the approach.