INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
FORMAL ONTOLOGY IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS
FOIS'98
In conjunction with
the 6th International Conference on Principles of
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
(KR'98)
TRENTO, ITALY, JUNE 6-8, 1998
Under the auspices of the Project
ONTOINT
(Ontological Tools for Heterogeneous Knowledge
Organization and Integration)
funded by the Italian National Research Council
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Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the
computer science community. Its importance has been recognized in
fields as diverse as qualitative modelling of physical systems,
natural language processing, knowledge engineering, information
integration, database design, geographic information science, and
intelligent information access. Insights in this field have
potential impacts on the whole area of information systems. In
order to provide a solid general foundation for this work, it is
therefore important to focus on the common scientific principles
and open problems arising from current tools, methodologies, and
applications of ontology. The purpose of this conference is to
take a first step in this direction.
The conference will have a strongly interdisciplinary character.
Expected participants include computer science practitioners as
well as linguists, logicians, and philosophers. Although the
primary focus of the conference is on theoretical issues,
methodological proposals as well as concrete applications from a
well-founded theoretical perspective will be discussed.
TOPICS
Problem areas that will be addressed at the conference include:
THEORETICAL ISSUES
- Foundations: parthood, constitution, identity, integrity,
dependence, causality
- Kinds of entity: particulars vs. universals, continuants vs.
occurrents, abstracta vs. concreta, attributes, relations,
qualities, quantities, tropes or moments, states, situations,
environments
- Matter, space, time, motion, change
- Natural kinds, organisms, artifacts
- The ontology of social reality: legal and administrative
entities, artistic expressions
- The ontology of information and information processing:
representations, signs, software products, virtual reality,
cyberspace
- Top-level ontological taxonomies: new proposals or critical
analyses of existing ones
- Cognitive foundations of ontological distinctions
- Kinds of ontology: top-level ontologies, domain ontologies,
task ontologies, application ontologies
- Ontological commitment
APPLICATION AREAS
- Knowledge organization, integration and standardization
- Intelligent information access
- Information systems design
- Knowledge engineering
- Conceptual modelling
- Qualitative modelling
- Lexical semantics
- Terminology integration
- Product knowledge integration
- Geographic information systems
- Legal information systems
TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES
- Ontological and linguistic instruments for conceptual
analysis
- Methodologies for ontology development, maintenance, and
integration
PROCEEDINGS
The proceedings will be published in the IOS-Press (Amsterdam)
bookseries "Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applcations"
and it will distributed to registered participants. A limited amount
of extra-copies will be available at the KR'98 conference desk at a
special reduced price. People registering to KR'98 or coordinated events
can order the proceedings by checking the appropriate box in the KR'98 registration form.
People who are not going to attend any of the KR'98 events can order such
extra-copies by contacting the organizers at fois98@irst.itc.it.
SPONSORSHIPS
The conference is sponsored by the project ONTOINT (Ontological
Tools for Heterogeneous Knowledge Organization and Integration),
funded by the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and the
following CNR institutes: Institute for Systems Theory and
Biomedical Engineering (LADSEB-CNR), Institute of Psychology
(IP-CNR), Institute for Biomedical Technologies (ITBM-CNR). Further
Sponsors are the Italian Association for Artficial Intelligence
(AI*IA) and the University of Modena. The conference is hosted by
ITC-IRST Trento, Italy.
GRANTS
Some student grants reserved to AI*IA members are available. Feel
free to ask the organizers for further monetary contributions
reserved to well-motivated people with serious budget limitations.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
CONFERENCE CHAIR:
Nicola
Guarino, National Research Council, LADSEB-CNR,
Corso Stati Uniti, 4, I-35127 Padova, Italy
e-mail: guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
ORGANIZATION CHAIR:
Alessandro Artale,
ITC-IRST
Povo, I-38050 Trento, Italy
e-mail: artale@irst.itc.it
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
- John Bateman (Dept. of English Studies, Univ. of Stirling,
UK)
- B. Chandrasekaran (Dept. of Computer and Information Science,
Ohio State Univ., USA)
- Tony Cohn (Division of Artificial Intelligence, Univ. of
Leeds, UK)
- Ernest Davis (Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences,
New York, USA)
- Richard Fikes (Knowledge Systems Lab., Stanford University,
USA)
- Kit Fine (Dept. of Philosophy, Univ. of California at Los
Angeles, USA)
- Mark Fox (Dept. of Industrial Engineering, Univ. of Toronto,
Canada)
- Nicola
Guarino (LADSEB-CNR, National Research Council, Padova,
Italy)
- Patrick J. Hayes (Inst. for Human and Machine Cognition,
Univ. of West Florida, USA)
- Graeme Hirst (Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto,
Canada)
- David Israel (Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI
International, Menlo Park, USA)
- Ingvar Johansson (Dept. of Philosophy and Philosophy of
Science, Umea Univ., Sweden)
- Fritz Lehmann (CYCorp, Austin, Texas, USA)
- Diego Marconi (Dept. of Humanities, Univ. of Torino at
Vercelli, Italy)
- Richiro Mizoguchi (Inst. of Scientific and Industrial
Research, Osaka Univ., Japan)
- Kevin Mulligan (Dept. of Philosophy, Univ. of Geneva,
Switzerland)
- Sergei Nirenburg (Computing Research Lab., New Mexico State
Univ., USA)
- James Pustejovsky (Computer Science Dept., Brandeis Univ.,
USA)
- Guus Schreiber (Dept. of Social Science Informatics, Univ. of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Peter Simons (School of Philosophy, Univ. of Leeds, UK and
Ontek Corp., USA)
- Doug Skuce (Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Ottawa,
Canada)
- Barry Smith (Dept. of Philosophy, State Univ. of New York at
Buffalo, USA)
- John Sowa (Philosophy and Computers and Cognitive Science,
Binghamton Univ., USA)
- Mike Uschold (Boeing Corporation, Seattle, USA)
- Reind Van De Riet (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer
Science, Vrije Univ., The Netherlands)
- Achille Varzi (Dept. of Philosophy, Columbia Univ., New York,
USA)
- Laure Vieu (IRIT - CNRS, Toulouse, France)
- Yair Wand (Faculty of Commerce and Business Admin., Univ. of
British Columbia, Canada)
- Ron Weber (The Univ. of Queensland, Australia)
- Chris Welty (Dept. of Computer Science, Vassar College, New
York, USA)
- Roel Wieringa (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science,
Vrije Univ., The Netherlands)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
- Alessandro Artale
- Enrico
Franconi (ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy)
- Nicola
Guarino - Claudio Masolo (LADSEB-CNR, Padova, Italy)
- Luca Pazzi - Sonia Bergamaschi (Univ. of Modena, Italy)
- Geri Steve - Aldo Gangemi (ITBM-CNR, Roma, Italy)
- Cristiano Castelfranchi - Rino Falcone (IP-CNR, Roma, Italy)