About IAOA – Page 5

IAOA Newsletter 2015/2016

February 25, 2016

Dear IAOA members,

2015 comprised a special milestone for our community as we marked the10th anniversary of the Applied Ontology journal [1]. Nicola Guarino,Mark Musen, and the rest of the Editorial Board worked hard on a specialissue, which will be published in the coming months.

IAOA was one of the co-organizers for Ontology Summit 2015 [2], whichaddressed the theme “The Internet of Things: Toward Smart NetworkedSystems and Societies.” and explored Ontology Integration in IoT,Semantic Sensor Network Ontologies, Decision Making in DifferentDomains, and Related Standards and Synergies for Emerging IoT Ontologies.

The Third IAOA Summer Institute (in cooperation with the VespucciInstitutes 2015) [3] was held during the week of June 22-26 at Collegeof the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA. The topic this year was”Spatial Ontologies for e-Science” with Werner Kuhn, Peter Fox, andMichael Gruninger as facilitators. Amidst the scenery of coastal Maine,participants engaged in a wide range of discussions, primarilyconsidering the notion of location. Topics included the role of locationin schema.org [4] and PROV-O [5], geoscience without geometry, and astudy of the concept of along (e.g. as in samples were taken alongthe river). Michael Gruninger was bestowed the honour of Fellow of the
Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information inScience [6]. Special thanks are extended to Werner Kuhn, whoseindomitable energy, inspiration, and organizational prowess made theSummer Institute another success.

Last year marked the first edition of JOWO (Joint Ontology Workshops)[7] at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence(IJCAI) [8] in Buenos Aires, Argentina on July 25-31. This eventco-located the Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WoMO), Formal Ontologiesfor Artificial Intelligence (FOfAI), the Workshop on Ontologies andLogic Programming for Query Answering, and the Workshop on Belief Changeand Non Monotonic Reasoning in Ontologies and Databases.

The 7th Workshop on Formal Ontologies Meet Industry (FOMI) [9] wasco-located with the RuleML Conference [10] in Berlin on August 5.Organized by Roberta Cuel and Bob Young, the workshop brought togetheran interesting mix of perspectives from a wide range of industrialapplications.

Concerning internal affairs, the end of the year brought changes to theExecutive Council (EC). Marion Haemmerli, Janna Hastings, and Leo Obrstall retired from the EC. Leo has served as an EC member from thecreation of IAOA in 2009, and Marion has been instrumental in laying thegroundwork for the relocation of IAOA from Italy to Switzerland. Aheartfelt thanks to Janna, Marion, and Leo for all of their hard work!Ken Baclawski, Amanda Vizedom, and Zena Wood were elected to theExecutive Council, with their term starting this January, 2016.

Under the leadership of Maria Keet and Zena Wood, the IAOA EducationCommittee has been re-energized, with the visible result of getting awiki [11] started, where people can find information on ontologycourses, material, and textbooks. See there [12] to find out how tocontribute to this effort.

This coming year will be quite exciting, with IAOA supporting severalmajor events. The Ninth International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016) [13] will be held in Annecy, France, onJuly 6-9. Giancarlo Guizzardi (General Chair) together with RobertaFerrario and Werner Kuhn (Programme Chairs), as well as PatrickBarlatier and Richard Dapoigny (Local Chairs), are crafting an amazingconference that will showcase the latest research in applied ontology.For up-to-date information, visit the website at
[13] https://www.iaoa.org/fois2016 .

The Education Committee is leading the planning for the Third Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) [14], which willtake place in Bolzano, Italy, between June 27 and July 1, 2016, i.e.Monday to Friday in the week before FOIS. Keep your eyes open for publicannouncements in the near future.

As in previous years, IAOA will again be a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit [15]. Ontology Summit 2016 has selected as theme for this year”Semantic Integration”. The Summit will offer a particularly importantopportunity for identifying use cases for applying formal ontologies tosemantic integration problems in the domains of earth sciences, biologyand medicine, cloud computing, engineering, and finance.

The relocation of IAOA from Italy to Switzerland is still on our agenda.Unfortunately, this project could not be finished in 2015 as intendedoriginally, primarily due to delays in the revision of the Statute andthe Bylaws for Switzerland. However, we are now approaching thecompletion of this revision as well as the formal foundation of IAOA inSwitzerland, which are planned until March 2016. Please note that thistiming has a side effect on membership renewals for 2016. All activememberships of 2015 are “silently” extended until March 31, 2016. Afterthe foundation of IAOA in Switzerland and the setup of a new bankaccount all members will be informed when we are ready to enroll forthis year.

With an active agenda for 2016, we look forward to your continuingsupport in all the endeavours of IAOA and will hope to see you at any orall of this year’s events!

Michael Gruninger and Oliver Kutz
for the IAOA Executive Council

[1] http://www.iospress.nl/journal/applied-ontology/
[2] http://ontolog.cim3.net/OntologySummit/2015/
[3] http://www.vespucci.org/presentation
[4] https://schema.org/
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/
[6] http://www.vespucci.org/
[7] https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/
[8] http://ijcai-15.org/
[9] http://www.csw.inf.fu-berlin.de/fomi2015/
[10] http://2015.ruleml.org/
[11] http://iaoaedu.cs.uct.ac.za
[12] http://iaoaedu.cs.uct.ac.za/pmwiki.php?n=IAOAEdu.HowToJoin
[13] https://www.iaoa.org/fois2016
[14] http://isao2016.inf.unibz.it/
[15] http://ontologforum.org/index.php/OntologySummit

Frank Loebe

1st Virtual Assembly during April 14-21 for 2013 Financial Statement and 2014 Budget Approval

March 25, 2014

[copy of today’s address to the membership by the IAOA President Michael Gruninger]
Dear IAOA members,our Statute requires the Association’s financial statement and annual budget to be formally approved every year by a (virtual) assembly, announced at least 15 days in advance. So this is a formal invitation to participate in the first 2014 virtual assembly, whose main purpose is to discuss and approve

our Statute requires the Association’s financial statement and annual budget to be formally approved every year by a (virtual) assembly, announced at least 15 days in advance. So this is a formal invitation to participate in the first 2014 virtual assembly, whose main purpose is to discuss and approve the 2013 Financial Statement and the 2014 Budget. Our financial status is safe, not only anticipating this year’s FOIS conference and Summer School. Overall, we are actively supporting participation in a wide variety of novel as well as traditional IAOA initiatives.

The relevant documents (Financial Statement plus Budget) will be published on April 02, 2014.

The discussion on the Budget (and possibly on any other issue concerning the Association) will take place between April 02 and April 09, 2014.

Finalized details will be published by April 11, 2014.

The voting period will be April 14-21, 2014. Detailed voting instructions will be distributed in advance and will be available at [1].

The quorum is satisfied if the number of votes exceeds 50%+1 of the IAOA membership count, determined on April 13. If we are not able to meet the quorum requirement, a second call will be necessary. The outcome of the voting will be announced to the members’ mailing list until April 30, 2014.

Please be aware that your vote takes just a few minutes, but is of huge importance to let our Association move forward. Guaranteeing that the IAOA is truly open and democratic is our first priority, and you will certainly understand that it requires a huge investment of voluntary time. We really count on your support!

Let me take this opportunity to express the gratitude of the whole IAOA Executive Council to our acting Treasurer, Laure Vieu. She did an excellent job in keeping our finances under rigorous control as in previous years, making at the same time everything transparent and understandable in any detail. Serving as Treasurer since IAOA’s inception, Laure is currently passing on the respective duties to our new designated Treasurer Fabian Neuhaus, under whose direction the 2014 budget has already been prepared, and to the new Membership Officer Claudio Masolo. We are grateful for their readiness and contributions.

2014 New Year’s Address to IAOA Members by the Executive Council

January 14, 2014

Dear IAOA members,

Happy New Year!

tripticoPortada.psd Looking back on 2013, it is evident that our Association is thriving in a number of areas.

2013’s Summer Institute was held in cooperation with the Vespucci Institute in Fiesole, Italy in June. The selected topic was: “Ontologies and models for integrated assessments of multiple-scale processes“. Using the notion of “land functions” as a basis, discussions covered a host of highly interdisciplinary approaches, including spatial micro-simulation models for environments and social science, to move towards an ontology of land function and land function dynamics.

Dimitris Ballas (University of Sheffield), Tom Bittner (SUNY-Buffalo), Max Craglia (JRC), Werner Kuhn (University of Mnster), Carlo Lavalle (JRC) served as facilitators. And particular thanks go to Werner Kuhn for his energy and assistance in another highly successful Summer Institute!

IAOA was also one of the co-organizers forOntologySummit 2013, which addressed the theme “Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle” and explored criteria, tools, and techniques for evaluating ontologies.

In addition, marking a new development for the Association, IAOA sponsored a Prize for the Best Hackathon-Clinic Project at the Ontology Summit.

The winners of the Award in 2013 were:

– Mike Bennett (FIBO; EDM Council; Hypercube)

– Mara Poveda Villaln (OOPS!; Universidad Politcnica de Madrid)

– Astrid Duque Ramos (OQuaRE; University of Murcia)

– Samir Tartir (OntoQA; Philadelphia University, Jordan)
Congratulations to all of the winners.

The new Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG was created in November, with Leo Obrst leading the effort. Various activities continued in the other Special Interest Groups and Technical Committees, although we are strongly encouraging much higher participation levels from members in the future! There is much to do. In particular, we are hoping to energize the Education Committee and initiate the development of an ontology textbook. Zena Wood has agreed to be the new Chair of the Education Committee, taking over from Antony Galton and Fabian Neuhaus.

The year also brought changes to the Executive Council, with Giancarlo Guizzardi and Laure Vieu both retiring.Many thanks to Giancarlo and Laure for all of their hard work! Laure, in particular, has served as our Treasurer since the inception of the Association, an absolutely vital role. The current success of IAOA is in large part due to her untiring efforts, and she will be greatly missed.

Elections were held in 2013, and Janna Hastings and Marion Haemmerli both joined the Executive Council, with their term starting this January, 2014. Re-elected to the Executive Council were Oliver Kutz, Frank Loebe, Fabian Neuhaus, and Leo Obrst.

For the coming year, 2014, we are eagerly anticipating a wide range of major events.Foremost, we have FOIS occurring this year September 22-25 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With Laure Vieu as General Chair, Pawel Garbacz and Oliver Kutz as Programme Committee Chairs, and Giancarlo Guizzardi and Renato Rocha Souza as Organization Chairs, FOIS promises to be a spectacular venue for the presentation of the latest ontological research. For the latest information, visit the website athttp://fois2014.inf.ufes.br .

The Second Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis will also take place in Vitoria, Brazil, in the week before FOIS. The emphasis here will be on ontological analysis, pursuing the goal of showing how the different disciplines within IAOA interact and communicate to answer a variety of problems. Details on the program/courses of the school, venue and accommodation and registration procedures are available athttps://iaoa.org/isc2014 .

As in previous years, IAOA will again be a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit. Ontology Summit 2014 has selected as theme for this year “Big Data and Semantic Web Meet Applied Ontology“. The Summit will offer a particularly important opportunity for building bridges between the Semantic Web, Linked Data, Big Data, and Applied Ontology communities. The Kickoff session takes place already on January 16, 2014 — for more details, see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2014 .

This coming year therefore holds great promise for new activities within the Association as well as new opportunities for involvement across all the interdisciplinary areas that make up Applied Ontology. We therefore look forward to your continuing support in all the endeavours of IAOA and will hope to see you at any or all of this year’s face-to-face events!

Michael Gruninger and John Bateman

for the IAOA Executive Council

Frank Loebe

Comments

SIG for Semantic Web Applied Ontology? Let us know what you think!

September 24, 2013

There is an informal proposal before the EC to form a Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG aiming to fill the gap between the Semantic Web community and the IAOA community. Some people have shown interest in this initiative. As part of investigating this issue, wed like to get feedback from IAOA members.

Often the two communities seem to think they have nothing in common, whereas some of us believe they share many common goals, common technologies, and a common interest in well-engineered applied ontologies. Many of us in IAOA promote and use Semantic Web technologies and reasoning methods; similarly, many in the Semantic Web community advocate more rigorous and principled ontologies based on ontological analysis. Therefore, we have proposed a Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG to bridge the gap between our two communities before it gets wider. This SIG would support communication and collaboration with our colleagues in the Semantic Web (and Linked Data) community.

Are you interested in this SIG? What do you think the SIG should do? How might the SIG work to bridge the gap? Would you participate in this SIG?

Please let us know your thoughts about such a SIG.

Thanks,

Leo

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	April 2024
Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	2	3 Ontology Summit 2024 Ontology Summit 2024 See more details •	4	5	6	7
8 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing See more details [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems See more details • •	9 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing See more details [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems See more details • •	10 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing See more details [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems See more details Ontology Summit 2024 Ontology Summit 2024 See more details • • •	11 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing See more details [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems [FoIKS 2024] 13th International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems See more details • •	12 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing 39th ACM SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing See more details •	13	14
15	16	17 Ontology Summit 2024 Ontology Summit 2024 See more details •	18	19	20	21
22	23	24 Ontology Summit 2024 Ontology Summit 2024 See more details •	25	26	27	28
29	30