A brief introduction to BORO Knowledge Graphs and Ontologies for Intelligence, Defence and Security 18th June Cheltenham Racecourse Chris Partridge (BORO Solutions and University of Westminster) A brief introduction to BORO Assume many of you will not be familiar with BORO (apologies to those who are) Aim to give you as much of a feel as possible in 20 minutes for what BORO is about be more of a helter-skelter helicopter ride over the territory than a deep dive (obvs) 2 What is BORO? 3 What is BORO? 1. Introduction The Business Object Reference Ontology BORO has chosen to adopt a closer integration with philosophy than other ontologies in the information systems domain … also, unlike them, it emerged from and was developed in commercial projects rather than in academia BORO includes a foundational (or upper) ontology and a closely intertwined methodology for information systems (IS) re-engineering (Partridge, 1996), hence the term BORO refers to both the ontology and the methodology . BORO was originally conceived in the late 1980s to address a particular need for a solid legacy re-engineering process and then evolved to address a wider need for developing enterprise systems in a ‘better way’; in other words, in a way that … enable[ed] higher levels of reuse and, as a consequence, capable of reducing the effort and cost of (re-)developing, maintaining and interoperating enterprise systems. It was eventually publicly documented in (Partridge, 1996) de Cesare, S. and Partridge, C. 2016. BORO as a Foundation to Enterprise Ontology. Journal of Information Systems. 30 (2), pp. 83-112. https://doi.org/10.2308/isys-51428 Partridge, C. 1996. Business Objects: Re-Engineering for Re-Use, Butterworth-Heinemann. 4 style.visibility style.visibility style.visibility What is BORO? BORO has two closely intertwined components BORO Foundational Ontology a foundational (or upper) ontology bCLEARer a methodology systematically mining (re-engineering) the semantics from information systems The two frameworks validate and inform each other top-down BORO Foundational Ontology guides the bottom-up framework bottom-up bCLEARer framework validates the whole model 5 BORO FO - top-down framework bCLEARer - bottom-up framework Components deployed across various exploitation routes transform assess build has the application already been deployed? is there a commercial application available in the market? has it already been selected? standard needs to be implemented in application? sustain target requires a standard? requirement semantics composition mereology classification external identifiers content standardise configure 6 IES Ongoing BORO development 2010 Mapping interest in the standards community: reveals ‘corporate’ preferences (myopia?) 1990 2000 2020 OMG UPDM 2 UAF 2025 DODAF DM2 bCLEARer MODAF/MODEM IDEAS ISO 15926 : Part 2 BORO Foundational Ontology 7 BORO Foundational Ontology 8 What use is a foundational (or upper) ontology? Pragmatically a way to globally structure/shape/form data to enable high fidelity semantic interoperability between machines (at scale) ‘machines talking (seamlessly) to machines’ 9 Genesis 11:1–9 speaks to the power of interoperability and to the curse of not having it. And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them . Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” In this ‘myth’, implausibly, the journey is ‘backwards’ from being interoperable to not being interoperable Benefits of interoperability: recognised as important quite early on 10 Tower of Babel style.visibility That was the dream: this is reality 11 <tank> cheap example – expensive problem Calibrating the level of data fidelity: what counts as successful interoperability? 12 intra -operability inter -operability System A machines talking to themselves machines talking to other machines System A 1 System A System A System B System B 2 we can use intra-operability as a rough benchmark t he goal is for the costs of intra- and inter-operability to be roughly comparable it should be (roughly) as easy to communicate within as across systems How does a foundational ontology work? How does a foundational ontology work? it sets up a ‘form’ for organising the data that enables semantic interoperability But … how does this ‘form’ work? the form ‘encodes’ the foundational ontology data is translated to this form, piggy-backs on the foundational ontology, and interoperates more effectively 13 By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race. … by the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically by the eye, which otherwise would call into play the higher faculties of the brain. … Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. Whitehead, Alfred North (1911). An Introduction to Mathematics. Williams & Norgate. Ch. V: style.visibility What kinds of things are encoded into the ontological form? 14 Appendix E: Summary of Framework Assessment Matrix Results https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/313452 web-based: https://digitaltwinhub.co.uk/a-survey-of-top-level-ontologies/#a_survey_of_TLOs_contents The ontological choices shape the form of the ontology 31 ontological choices BORO’s ontological choices ( horizontal aspect ) style.visibility style.visibility style.visibility What is the BORO Foundational Ontology’s form? The BORO Foundational Ontology: its choices can be characterised at a broad level as: unifying (also colloquially, four-dimensional or extensional) constructional 15 “4.2.2 Horizontal aspects: stratification versus unification There is a group of fundamental choices that impact the ontological architecture which involves whether or not to make a distinction. If one chooses not to make the distinction, one only introduces a single type. If one chooses to make the distinction, one introduces two types; one for each alternative. The choice boils down to whether to horizontally stratify or unify. One can describe choosing to make the distinction as ‘separating one potentially unified type into two’, creating a horizontal stratification in the hierarchy – and not making the distinction, ‘unifying the potentially separated two types into one’.” Similar to, but not quite the same as, lumpers and splitters Extensionalism 101 (replaceable parts) 16 A The car has a front left tyre (A). When the car was built, a tyre (B) (serial no. ABC) was ‘installed’ on the car. At some point in time, this tyre (B) was taken off and a new tyre (C) (serial no. DEF) installed . B C A 2 1 Two new first-class components (1 & 2) style.visibility style.visibility style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility ppt_w ppt_h style.visibility Old fashioned perspective on BORO’s architecture 17 Foundational Data Layer Core Constructional Ontology Foundation Data Model Top Level Ontology Top Level Ontology three layers setology tupleology mereology constructionology pluralology setology, tupleology and mereology each broken down into modules Givens Constructors General principle: Define any constructional ontology with 2 types of things: givens and constructors the ‘pluriverse’ of all the possible worlds BORO as a constructional ontology sum decomposer 18 set composer tuple composer BORO Foundational Ontology: one given; three constructors whole ontology constructed from a single object sum decomposer 19 tuple composer set composer pluriverse complete ontology bCLEARer Methodology 20 The user perspective 21 bCLEARer’s five stages {5C22544A-7EE6-4342-B048-85BDC9FD1C3A} stages Collect Collect the datasets Establish the broad scope of the process Load Select the data in scope Translate the data into the cells Evolve Reveal the underlying semantics Mine the ontology Assimilate Merge the run into the full model Establish a single integrated model Reuse Export into applications and (re-)use 22 collect load evolve assimilate reuse Multiple inputs, multiple runs, integrated 23 a repeated sequence of automated processes: a scalable way to systematically improve semantic maturity data 2 increasing semantic maturity reuse reuse Foundational ontology collect data 1 data 3 collect collect integrated into a single foundational ontology Schematic view of one bCLEARer engine 24 Increase maturity in pragmatic steps 25 increasing semantic maturity evolve Entity repository project 1 project 2 project 3 entification O-O repository object-orientation Ontological repository ontologisation (or ontologification) style.visibility style.visibility style.visibility style.visibility Example: Evolve – Entification 26 schema entification system (schema) entified schema semantics representations (data) represented (real world) evolve ontology extraction ontology schema Project The Evolve stage of the project focusses on entification: revealing the underlying semantics pipeline architecture Current Work 27 BORO Foundational Ontology: example defence/government implementations IES the Information Exchange Standard (IES) is a standard for information exchange developed within UK Government Telicent (software) uses IES being used in two major UK government programmes National Digital Twin, and ODYSSEY a major 10-year digitisation programme in Defence Intelligence 28 bCLEARer: example digital twin data integrations 29 bCLEARer cost is a small fraction of the overall digitalisation projects’ cost – but the success of the project critically depends on bCLEARer working Look-ahead: some of the improvements in the pipeline Ontologies for: Modality possibility, necessity and impossibility compossibility and incompossibility probability layering epistemology (knowledge) and doxastology (belief) on ontology Data (syntax) data (pipeline) ontology data identity twins inspectability-driven pipeline design (data) ontology driven transformation inspectability data form (graph) ontology single constructional graph foundational ontology underpinning graph interoperability 30 31 questions 32