Integrating large knowledge repositories in multiagent ontologies

Abstract

Knowledge is people’s personal map of the world. According to the knowledge differences, it is possible different groups of people have different perceptions about the same reality. Each perception can be represented by using ontologies. In the research underlying this paper we are dealing with a multiple ontologies. In that context, each agent explores its own ontology. The goal of this research is to generate a common ontology including a common set of terms, based on the several ontologies available, in order to make possible to share the common terminology (set of terms) that it implements, between dif-ferent communities. In this paper we are presenting a real implementation of a system using those concepts. The paper provides a case study involving groups of people in different communities, managing data using different perceptions (terminologies), and different semantics to represent the same reality. Each user – belonging to a different community - uses different terminologies in collect-ing data and as a consequence they also get different results of that exercise. It is not a problem if the different results are used inside each community. The problem occurs if people need to take data from other communities, sharing, collaborating and using it to get a more global solution.